Philippine tarsier

Tarsiers only eat animals.

They catch bugs, spiders and sometimes little lizards. They never eat fruit or leaves.

Most primates eat at least some fruit or leaves, but tarsiers eat no plants at all. They are the only primates that eat only animals.

A tarsier waits quietly on a stem, watching and listening. When it spots an insect or spider, it leaps and grabs it with its hands. It also catches frogs, lizards and even small birds. In the dry season, when food is harder to find, it probably spends more time hunting.

Tarsiers are the only fully carnivorous primates, eating no plant material (New England Primate Conservancy). The Philippine tarsier takes mainly insects, plus spiders, frogs, lizards and small birds (Animal Diversity Web).

In spectral tarsiers of Sulawesi, foraging takes about 55 percent of waking time, travel 23 percent, rest 16 and social activity 6; Philippine tarsiers likely spend their nights similarly, foraging and traveling more in the dry season. Hunting relies on acute vision and hearing and a sudden leap to seize prey by hand.

Tarsiers sleep in the day, hidden in thick plants.

At night they wake up to hunt. They squeak when they are scared.

Tarsiers are nocturnal. In the day they sleep hidden in thick plants close to the ground, and at night they come out to hunt. They spend most of their time clinging upright to thin stems.

They usually live in pairs, a male and a female, sometimes with young. Each pair has a small home range of about one or two hectares, about the size of two or three soccer fields. Tarsiers are quieter than most primates, but they squeak when in danger and use smell marks to say "this is my place".

Fully arboreal and nocturnal, tarsiers sleep in dense vegetation near the ground, usually near the edge of the home range, using three or four regular sleeping sites. They cling vertically, leap rather than walk, and move almost silently (New England Primate Conservancy).

They are most often seen in male-female pairs, sometimes in groups of about four, in home ranges of 1 to 2 hectares that overlap with the opposite sex but little with the same sex. Females travel about 1,100 meters a night and males about 1,600. Males are strongly territorial. Calls maintain territory and pair contact, a high squeak signals danger, and urine and gland scent marks are used extensively.

Tarsiers need their forests.

They need quiet places to sleep in the daytime. The best way to see one is quietly, in a safe place.

The Philippine tarsier is listed as Near Threatened. Little untouched forest is left where it lives, and fewer tarsiers live in damaged forest. Some are caught and sold as pets, even though that is against the law, and they rarely live long as pets.

Tourism can help, because visitors make local people proud of tarsiers. But some places catch wild tarsiers to show visitors in the daytime, when they should be asleep. Tarsiers are protected by law in the Philippines.

The IUCN lists Carlito syrichta as Near Threatened (Shekelle, 2020). Very little primary habitat remains, densities are lower in disturbed forest, the range is small, and high infant mortality slows recovery. Declining insect abundance may also reduce food (New England Primate Conservancy).

Illegal capture for the pet trade continues; captive tarsiers need large amounts of live insects and often do poorly. Tourism has raised local support but also drives wild capture for daytime displays. The species is protected under Philippine law and listed in CITES Appendix II; captive breeding has mostly failed, so protecting wild habitat matters most.