Sifaka
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40 free Sifaka trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Sifakas are the acrobats of Madagascar: long-limbed lemurs that fling themselves from trunk to trunk and bounce across open ground in a way that has charmed visitors and television audiences alike. Every species is threatened, and several are among the rarest primates in the world. This quiz gathers the best fun facts about sifakas: how they move, what they eat and how their unusual digestion copes with it, how groups are organised, how infants grow up and how the animals raise the alarm. It also covers the different species and the people they are named after, the legends told about them in Madagascar, and the sifaka that became a children's television star. The questions start easy and end with a few deep cuts, so they suit curious kids, classrooms, quiz nights and wildlife fans. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you will finish knowing more about these lemurs than when you started.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The name sifaka, used by the people of Madagascar for these leaping lemurs, imitates which thing?
Their warning cry
Their warning cry is an explosive, hissing shi-fak, repeated several times when danger appears on the ground. The dry-forest species make it; their rainforest cousins sound quite different.
Q 02Which PBS Kids series, first shown in 1999, had a leaping Coquerel's sifaka as its talking title character?
Zoboomafoo
Zoboomafoo mixed footage of a real sifaka with a talking puppet and ran for 65 episodes. The show is credited with teaching millions of children what a lemur is.
Q 03When the trees are too far apart, sifakas come down and cross open ground in which unusual way?
Hopping sideways upright
Hopping sideways upright, with arms waving for balance, has earned sifakas the nickname dancing lemurs. They can cross more than 100 metres of open ground this way.
Q 04Which cat-like carnivore, found only on Madagascar, preys on sifakas and takes many of their infants?
Fossa
Fossa attacks kill about 30% of infant Verreaux's sifakas. It is the only predator able to take adults of every living lemur species.
Q 05Which members of a sifaka group are dominant, eating first and even smacking those who get in the way?
The females
The females take the best feeding spots while the males wait their turn. Such matriarchy is rare in the animal kingdom as a whole but common among lemurs.
Q 06Which all-white sifaka, the flagship animal of Marojejy National Park, is one of the rarest mammals on Earth?
Silky
Silky sifaka numbers are put at fewer than 1,000, with under 250 mature adults, and none is kept in any zoo. It lives at higher elevations than any other sifaka.
Q 07In a Malagasy legend that made sifakas sacred, a sifaka catches a falling boy who had climbed a tree for what?
Honey
Honey was the prize, but bees attacked the boy and he lost his grip on the branch. A large lemur swooped in and caught him, and killing one has been said to bring misfortune ever since.
Q 08When two friendly Coquerel's sifakas meet in the forest, they greet each other in which way?
Rubbing noses
Rubbing noses is the friendly hello. Neighbouring groups mostly keep out of each other's way, even where their home ranges overlap.
Q 09Some Coquerel's sifakas in forest enclosures in North Carolina happily eat which plant that gives people itchy rashes?
Poison ivy
Poison ivy is on the menu for some of the sifakas that range free in the forest. Keepers also cut fresh redbud, tulip poplar and sweetgum for them every day in the warmer months.
Q 10Sifakas hurl themselves from one tree trunk to the next using only the strength of which part of the body?
Their hind legs
Their hind legs are so long and powerful that one push can carry a sifaka more than 20 feet to the next trunk. The longest leaps between trees reach about 10 metres.
Q 11A newborn sifaka clings to its mother's belly, then after about a month spends more and more time where?
On her back
On her back, jockey style, is where a young sifaka rides from about four weeks old. By three or four months, mothers start nipping at infants to make them travel on their own.
Q 12Milne-Edwards's sifaka and its rainforest relatives signal danger on the ground with a loud call likened to what?
A sneeze
A sneeze is the closest match, and scientists write the sound as zzuss or vouiff. Recordings show that its structure differs from one individual to the next.
Q 13Which North Carolina university runs the lemur center that owns every Coquerel's sifaka in American zoos?
Duke
Q 21Pushing off a trunk, Milne-Edwards's sifaka makes which move in mid-air so that it faces its landing spot?
A half twist
A half twist of 180 degrees turns the animal to face the tree ahead, with the arms and tail steering the spin. It swings them down again on landing, much like a long-jumper.
Q 22Which enlarged gut pouch, described as an overgrown appendix, lets sifakas ferment tough leaf fibre into nutrients?
Cecum
Cecum microbes break down fibre, neutralise plant toxins and even make vitamins. A sifaka's whole gut is 14 to 15 times as long as its body.
Q 23Sifakas, like all lemurs, carry a special claw used for grooming on which toe of each foot?
The second toe
Duke University has kept lemurs since 1966, and its center is one of very few places to breed this delicate species. Other zoos hold their animals on loan from it.
Q 14Which Coquerel's sifaka, born in North Carolina in 1994, became the live-action star of a PBS Kids animal show?
Jovian
Jovian filmed his scenes with his parents, Nigel and Flavia, as occasional stand-ins, and later fathered 13 offspring. He died of kidney failure in 2014, aged 20.
Q 15Coquerel's sifakas at a famous lemur center in North Carolina are named after which group of historical figures?
Roman emperors
Roman emperors, empresses and consorts supply the names, which is how the colony came to include a Pompeia and a Charlemagne, known as Charlie.
Q 16Which near-tailless lemur, famous for its loud songs, is the largest living relative of the sifakas?
The indri
The indri belongs to the same family and matches the biggest sifaka at about 6.5 kg. Its songs can last more than three minutes and are answered by neighbouring groups.
Q 17Which sifaka, named for the white band of fur that frames its face, is the largest of the group?
Diademed
Diademed sifaka adults average about 6.5 kg, which makes the species one of the two largest lemurs alive. A diadem is a jewelled headband.
Q 18Perrier's sifaka of northern Madagascar is covered in fur of which colour?
Almost all black
Almost all black, with a brownish tint underneath, Perrier's sifaka is known locally as ankomba joby, the black lemur. It is the smallest of the eastern sifakas.
Q 19In one Malagasy tale, a man named Radjako turned into a Perrier's sifaka after his wife hit him with what?
A spoon
A spoon did it, in one version of the story. The Antankarana people call the species radjako after a legendary hero from whom they believe these sifakas descend.
Q 20Von der Decken's sifaka honours a German explorer who was the first European to attempt to climb which mountain?
Mount Kilimanjaro
Mount Kilimanjaro beat him twice, with bad weather stopping one climb at around 14,000 feet. He visited Madagascar in 1863, two years before he was killed in Somalia.
The second toe bears the so-called toilet-claw. Sifakas also groom with a toothcomb, a row of lower front teeth that juts forward like a comb.
Q 24Some male Verreaux's sifakas carry which visible sign of heavy scent-marking, one linked to higher testosterone levels?
A stained chest
A stained chest comes from smearing gland secretions onto branches again and again. Males with clean fur there mark less and instead offer their companions more grooming.
Q 25In Malagasy culture, what is a fady, something that has long protected some sifakas from hunters?
A taboo
A taboo on harming sifakas holds around the town of Daraina, partly because the animals look so human. Such customs are weakening as newcomers move in.
Q 26Which practice, known in Madagascar as tavy, has destroyed much of the forest that sifakas depend on?
Slash-and-burn farming
Slash-and-burn farming clears land with fire, but the soil is soon exhausted and farmers push on into fresh forest. Fires that escape also eat away at the forest edge.
Q 27Illegal logging of which precious hardwood surged in Marojejy's sifaka forests after Madagascar's 2009 political crisis?
Rosewood
Rosewood felling opens up the canopy, which makes forest fires more likely and helps invasive species take root. Marojejy and Masoala national parks were hit hardest.
Q 28Sifakas have been seen eating soil from mounds built by which creatures, possibly to help them digest leaves?
Termites
Termites build the mounds, and the soil may add helpful gut microbes for breaking down cellulose. Milne-Edwards's sifakas also eat a fungus that grows underground.
Q 29Sifakas have been seen biting and scratching to fight off which kind of large snake in Madagascar's forests?
A boa
A boa is a powerful constrictor, yet sifakas have been seen driving one off. More often they rely on acrobatics high in the trees to stay out of reach.
Q 30When sifakas hear the roaring bark that signals a bird of prey overhead, how do they respond?
Look up and climb down
Look up and climb down is the drill when a raptor is about. A different call, given for hunters on the ground, sends sifakas looking down and climbing higher instead.