For Leannah ...

Lemurs were the dominant life form on the planet and when the continents split up, Madagascar kind of sailed off then into what suddenly became the Indian Ocean and took with it a representative sample of the livestock of the area, which included a lot of lemurs. They sat there for millions and millions of years in glorious isolation, while in the rest of the world a new creature emerged that was much more intelligent than the lemurs, according to it, much more competitive, much more aggressive and incredibly interested in all the things you could do with twigs.

Twigs were absolutely wonderful. There's so much you can do with twigs. You can dig around in the ground, you can burrow into the barks of trees for grubs, and you can hit each other with twigs. If there would have been Twig User magazine around in those days, these creatures would have been lining up for it. As you may have guessed, these animals were called the monkeys.

Because they were more competitive than lemurs, they successfully supplanted lemurs everywhere in the world except Madagascar. Madagascar was right out in the middle of the Indian Ocean and they couldn't get there until about 1,500 years ago when, due to startling advances in twig technology, they were able to get there in boats and planes. Suddenly, the lemurs, who had had this place to themselves for millions and millions of years were suddenly facing their old enemy, the monkey.