Trip reports

Madagascar - the Lost Continent

Tuesday, 4 December 2007

Robert Harvey used this talk to describe a holiday he took a couple of years ago, and this time birds were very much also-rans. Instead we got both a history and a natural history of Madagascar.
So starting with Gondwana (necessary to explain why the island has an iguana) we learned that Madagascar has similarities with the Galapagos in terms of endemic species. Obviously lemurs come to mind, and we were shown photos of most of the species from pygmy upwards.
The format of the talk was a trip through the various vegetation zones, and this worked well because there was so much to absorb, and to marvel - I had never heard of a spine-desert before.
We finished with a reminder that so many species had arrived both by sea and by chance - including the people, whose strangest custom seems to be that they spend more on the quality of family mausoleums than they appear to do on their own housing. A very interesting, well-balanced talk.