Madagascar Movie: Nightmare in Real Life

"Madagascar" Movie: Nightmare in Real Life? By Stefan Lovgren National Geographic Kids News April 22, 2005

In this summer's animated movie Madagascar, four animal friends—a lion, giraffe, zebra, and hippopotamus—escape from a New York City zoo. They find themselves in Africa when they are shipwrecked on, you guessed it, the island of Madagascar (see map).

Located off Africa's east coast, Madagascar is the world's fourth largest island, almost the size of Texas.

After breaking away from the African continent 165 million years ago, Madagascar has developed a unique ecosystem. About 80 percent of the plants and animals on the island are found nowhere else on Earth.

In real life, Madagascar has no lions, giraffes, zebras, or hippos. Its most famous residents are lemurs, big-eyed primates that spend most of their time in trees. Primates are mammals that have hands or feet that can grab things. Monkeys, apes, and people are all primates. Gloria the Hippo, Melman the Giraffe, and Marty the Zebra try Among the lemurs' few enemies are fossas, catlike to figure out where they have predators with long tails. Fossas are actually related to landed in the new film mongooses. Madagascar. Illustration courtesy But the real threat to the island's wildlife is people. DreamWorks Animation Human activities—farming, grazing, and clearing forests with fire—have hurt both the rain forests in the east and the dry forests in the west of Madagascar.

At least 15 species of lemurs are believed to have gone extinct. Less than 10 percent of the original island's forests remain.

Introducing new animals—say, lions, giraffes, zebras or hippos—to Madagascar would not be wise, Andy Blue said. He's an animal-care manager at the San Diego Zoo's Wild Animal Park in California.

Although all four animals usually live in the open spaces of East Africa, Blue thinks they would probably survive in the forests of Madagascar too. But they could cause serious damage to the native flora and fauna.

"Lions would compete for a limited amount of prey," Blue said. "The giraffes would destroy even more of the tree cover that other animals desperately depend on."

Without trees for food and shelter, the rest of Madagascar's lemurs could go extinct.