When they’re not on location, filmmakers Adrian Bailey and Robyn Keene-Young live in Limpopo Province, South Africa, a region of expansive sub-tropical woodland areas teeming with wildlife. And they don’t live alone; they have upstairs neighbors—a family of small, nocturnal, arboreal primates called galagos, also known as bush babies.
In this Backyard Nature video from Nature PBS, Bailey and Keene-Young share remote camera footage of the galago family. See the animals emerge for an evening of activity.
“Those big round eyes help them see in the dark,” Keene-Young explains. “But they can’t move them so instead, they swivel their heads.”
“The family’s just waking up. Even though, they normally sleep in tree hollows, we’ve had generations of this family as tenants for over a decade.”
Adrian continues to narrate the footage:
“They’re almost ready to set off to forage. But first, they must check out their surroundings. They are smaller than my fist and the African night is full of dangerous predators like genets and owls.”
Galagos travel a mile or two every night, visiting up to an estimated 500 trees during their search for insects and tree gum, a sap. Their incredible leaping skills—up to 16 feet in a single bound—allow them to evade predators as they move effortlessly through the treetops.
Watch more primate videos on TKSST, including:
• Mother and baby red-tailed sportive lemurs
• Baby ring-tailed lemurs cling to their mother in Madagascar
• Primate Parenthood: Red ruffed lemur & Allen’s swamp monkey
• Slow Loris Conservation in Vietnam
• Aye-ayes pick their noses with their extra-long middle finger
Bonus: How do animals see in the dark?
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