A lemur recently discovered in Madagascar has the largest testes per body weight ever recorded for a primate. Christoph Schwitzer, the director of conservation at the Bristol Zoological Society in the U.K., said that if the northern giant mouse lemur's testes were to scale and human-sized, they would be as big as grapefruits, according to Live Science.
To put it another way, the northern giant mouse lemur - which weighs 11 ounces (300 grams) as an adult - has testes with an average volume of 15.48 cubic centimeters. At 5.5 percent of its body, that's eight times the volume of other lemurs. An adult human male has an average testes volume of 18 cubic centimeters - 0.05 percent of his body.
"There are still debates whether large testicles are because of a higher amount of sperm, or because of a higher mating frequency," Eva Johanna Rode-Margono of the Nocturnal Primate Research Group at Oxford Brookes University told BBC Earth.
Another oddity about the sex life of the northern giant mouse lemur: it mates year-round, which could explain the need for such a high volume capacity. The lemurs sleep in groups of eight, which isn't uncommon; however, the group also includes unrelated males. Typically, males do not share nests or mates and conflicts often arise when males fight over mates and territory. "Think about having two unrelated men in your bedroom, really," Schwitzer told Live Science. "It is something that even humans don't normally do."
So, why are researchers so into lemur testes? And if they mate so much, why are they endangered?
Madagascar is plagued with deforestation and lemurs have lost much of their habitat. Also, lemur populations become isolated when deforestation causes rifts between groups. "In order to design effective conservation measures, we need to have at least a little bit of knowledge of what we're trying to conserve," Schwitzer told Live Science.
Lemurs, or Mirza zaza, were first given a scientific name in 2005. Lemurs are considered the most endangered mammal on the planet, as previously reported by HNGN, and are listed as "endangered" on IUCN's Red List.
The study was published in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology. This was the first ecological study ever conducted on the lemur.
To learn more about lemurs and the matriarchal society in which they live, CLICK HERE.
