The pygmy tarsier, a primate that has not been seen alive since 1921 and was thought extinct, has been rediscovered in Indonesia (Image: Sharon Gursky-Doyen/Texas A and M University)

On a misty mountaintop on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, scientists have observed a living pygmy tarsier – one of the planet’s smallest and rarest primates – for the first time in more than 80 years.

Over a two-month period, the scientists used nets to trap three furry, mouse-sized pygmy tarsiers – two males and one female – on Mount Rore Katimbo in Lore Lindu National Park. They spotted a fourth one that got away.

The tarsiers, which some scientists believed were extinct, may not have been overly thrilled to be found. One of them bit Sharon Gursky-Doyen, from Texas A&M University, who took part in the expedition.


“I’m the only person in the world to ever be bitten by a pygmy tarsier,” says Gursky-Doyen.

“My assistant was trying to hold him still while I was attaching a radio collar around his neck,” she says. “It’s very hard to hold them because they can turn their heads around 180°. As I was trying to close the radio collar, he turned his head and nipped my finger.”

The collars were being attached so the tarsiers’ movements could be tracked through their remote habitat.

Clawed primate

Tarsiers are primates – the mammalian group that includes lemurs, monkeys, apes and people. The handful of tarsier species live on various Asian islands.

As their name indicates, pygmy tarsiers are small – weighing about 2 ounces (50 grams). They have large eyes and large ears, and they have been described as looking a bit like one of the creatures in the 1984 movie Gremlins.

They are nocturnal insectivores and are unusual among primates in that they have claws rather than finger nails.

Pygmy tarsiers had not been seen alive by scientists since 1921. In 2000, Indonesian scientists who were trapping rats in the Sulawesi highlands accidentally trapped and killed a pygmy tarsier.

“Until that time, everyone really didn’t believe that they existed, because people had been going out looking for them for decades and nobody had seen them or heard them,” says Gursky-Doyen.

Her group observed the first live pygmy tarsier in August at an elevation of about 6900 feet (2103 metres).

“Everything was covered in moss and the clouds are right at the top of that mountain. It’s always very, very foggy; very, very dense. It’s cold up there,” says Gursky-Doyen. “When you’re 1° from the equator, you expect to be hot. You don’t expect to be shivering most of the time. That’s what we were doing.”