Our theme letter this week is N. We looked for an animal that has the letter N and we found the Nagapie. Do you know what this is? It is called a bushbaby in English.
The nagapie was first recorded by a man who was in the army in Africa in the mid-19th century. He was an army medical officer and was also a Naturalist. (He loved researching and recording new things he found in nature.) He found this wee little animal and gave it the Dutch name of nachtaapje which in English means “night-ape.” Old Dutch became Afrikaans in Southern Africa and the name became “nagapie.”
The little animal is not actually an ape. Apes have no tails; they are a sister group to monkeys. A nagapie is the sweetest little animal that lives in the bush and usually sleeps all day and comes out at night. Bushbabies are found in East Africa in forests and plains, they do not live in high mountains. They like to make their homes in hollow trees that provide them shelter.
Bushbabies do not like to be pets, they get very stressed if they are caught and get very worried if they are transported away from the area they live in. Bushbabies are social animals that live in complex family groups in the wild and they do not survive well as solitary pets.
Bushbabies are nocturnal (that means they only come out at night) tree-dwelling primates native to Africa. These squirrel-sized mammals are very agile, able to leap incredible distances and move swiftly through the tree tops. They are omnivorous (this means they have a mixed diet that includes insects, small birds, eggs, fruits, seeds and tree gum). Bushbabies are highly social and live in complex family groups.
Some people say they are called “bushbabies” because of their large eyes, “cute” appearance, and cries that sound like human babies. Bushbabies live up to 10 years in the wild.
Bushbabies are the smallest primates (a primate is a mammal) on the African continent. You don’t see them much, but at night you can hear them as the cries are quite loud for such a small animal. There are two kinds of bushbabies – one is the lesser bushbaby and the other is the thick-tailed bushbaby. The lesser bushbaby species has twins when they have their babies, and this can happen twice a year. The thick-tailed bushbabies usually have twins or even triplets but they only have babies once a year. When the babies are born, the mother will leave them in the nest to go and search for food. Bushbabies’ eyes do not move around like your eyes do, so they have to move their heads in order to see around them.
The bushbabies’ ears are very developed so they can hear things we often cannot. They are very, very quick little monkeys; they can catch food with their front feet while holding onto a tree with their back feet. They can catch grasshoppers and moths that are flying by just like that. The bushbabies make good eating for owls, snakes and African wildcats. So their hearing must be good to enable them to hide quickly so they don’t get caught and eaten.
The bushbabies grow up very quickly; they even start playing with their siblings a day or two after they are born. They leave their nests earlier than many other primates.
Photo credit: Ingrid Fouche
