Fauna
Madagascar fauna differs from that of nearby Africa because of its extremely high numbers of endemic species and the absence of big cats. There are over 100,000 species of invertebrates, some of which are very well known by collectors, like the biggest butterfly in the world, the comet, with two tails that may exceed 20cm, or the great Phasm whose female may be as long as 25cm.
But the rarest Malagasy lemur remains the Aye Aye, which was saved from extinction in 1966. It is a weird animal which is said to have combined the teeth of a rabbit, the ears of a bat, the bristle of a boar, the hands of a monkey and the tail of a fox!
Flora
Madagascar has fascinated several generations of naturalists. The West is the realm of baobabs of which Madagascar is home to 7 species compared to 2 for Australia and only one for the whole of Africa. In the easy and north-east forests, one has to climb through vegetation springing from everywhere, from the rocks, ground or trunks and branches. In this area, more than one thousand varieties of orchids, of which some have memorable little anecdotes attached to them, have been identified. Studying the Angraecum Sesquipedale which as a 35cm long spur, Alfred Russel Wallace came to the conclusion that there surely exists an insect with a proboscis long enough to gather its nectar. The butterfly with that famous proboscis was discovered forty years later. It was named Xanthopan Morgani Praedicta as a tribute to the theories of Wallace.