A Visit to the Philippine Tarsier

Tarsier

With its huge eyes, long tail, and hands and feet that must have inspired Steven Spielberg when he created E.T., the Philippine tarsier is almost Bohol's trademark. Still, few people have had the opportunity to have a close encounter with it.

The reason is twofold. Because it is a shy nocturnal animal that leads a mostly hidden life, it sleeps at daytime near the trunks of trees and shrubs deep in the impenetrable bushes and forests. They only become active at night, and even then, with their much better sight, and amazing ability to maneuver around trees are very well able to avoid us noisy humans well before we become aware of it's presence, so even when they were still present in abundance, the worlds of the tarsier and humans were mostly separated. But today, due to the quickly growing population, which causes more and more forests to be converted to farmland, housing areas and roads, the place where the tarsier can life it's secluded life is disappearing.

The tarsier is often claimed to be the world's smallest monkey -- however, this claim is somewhat dubious, since, although they are primates, technically, the tarsier is not a monkey. According to biology, it belongs to its own suborder under the primates, the prosimii or haplorrhini, while monkeys and apes belong to another suborder, that of the anthropods. Furthermore, even smaller primates have recently been in discovered on Madagascar: the adult pygmy mouse lemur weighs about 30 grams. But don't let this disillusion you, the Philippine tarsier is still a very special animal, well worth a day trip while you're on Bohol, and for some it is even the reason for their trip, and with an average 130 grams for an adult Philippine tarsier, it is still one of the smallest primates...

How to meet the tarsier yourself

If you want to visit the tarsier, please go to the Tarsier sanctuary in Corella. Although tarsiers are also on display at some other places in Bohol, notably in Loboc, as part of the trip to the floating restaurants on the Loboc River, only here you can see the tarsier in its (almost) natural habitat. The tarsier sanctuary is also the only place holding the tarsiers legally.