Saturday, November 12, 2005

avahi cleesei

ok, so this from the web.....That Monty Python snake didn't work out. But thanks to his tongue-in-cheek love for lemurs--and his real-life interest in animal conservation--John Cleese has secured a place in the annals of science.

Cleese, who played a lemur-happy zookeeper in the 1997 film Fierce Creatures and hosted 1998 documentary Born to Be Wild: Operation Lemur with John Cleese, the comic now has a new species of the primate named after him.

Researches at Zurich University have dubbed a tiny, leaf-loving lemur in Madagascar the avahi cleesei. The endangered, two-pound furry creature was discovered in the western region of the country in 1990 by the Zurich team, but wasn't named until now.
Cleese has yet to comment on the distinction, but word is he's pretty pleased.

"John Cleese is a lemur fancier," Urs Thalmann, who discovered the species with colleague Thomas Geissman, told the BBC. "I asked for his permission through his agent, and he was really excited."

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