Real life Furbies!?!?

A primate species that looks like a living, breathing version of the Furby electronic toy has been found alive in the forested highlands of an Indonesian island for the first time in more than 70 years, scientists announced Tuesday.

Three specimens of the pygmy tarsier, a nocturnal creature about the size of a small mouse, were trapped and tracked this summer on Mount Rorekatimbo in Lore Lindu National Park in Central Sulawesi, Texas A&M University reported.

Texas A&M anthropologist Sharon Gursky-Doyen, leader of the expedition, said the tarsiers were found on mountainsides above 6,000 feet (1,800 meters) in elevation, amid damp, dangerous terrain. "I actually broke my fibula walking around there," she told msnbc.com.

Pygmy tarsiers rank among the rarest of the many tarsier species in Asia and the Pacific — and in fact some primatologists had written them off as extinct.

There are plenty of questions to be answered: For example, unlike nearly all other primate species, pygmy tarsiers have claws instead of nails on their fingers. Other clawed primates, such as marmosets and tamarins, are thought to have adapted to grip onto trees or dig out insects for food. Why did pygmy tarsiers follow a similar evolutionary path?

Unlike other tarsier species — including the species that live farther down the mountainside — the pygmy tarsiers don't seem to call to each other or mark their territory with a musky scent. "How are pygmy tarsiers communicating with one another if they're not doing it through vocalizations or scent marking?" Gursky-Doyen asked.

One clue came when the scientists saw a tarsier open its mouth in the wild. "It looked like it might be vocalizing, but I couldn't hear anything," Gursky-Doyen said. She speculated that the creature might have been calling in frequencies that couldn't be heard by humans, but were well-suited to cut through the cacophony of forest rainfall.

Gursky-Doyen said she hoped the latest find would put added pressure on government officials to protect habitat within the national park.

"At present, the national park is over 2,000 square kilometers [in area], but there are 60 villages of people living within that park," she explained. She said some of those settlements are closing in on the mountain habitat frequented by the reclusive tarsiers and other, yet-to-be-discovered species.

"As the villages get closer and closer, there's going to be more disruption," she said.

Gursky-Doyen’s research was funded by the National Geographic Society, the Conservation International Primate Action Fund, Primate Conservation Inc. and Texas A&M.
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