Ring-Tailed lemurs have been on my absolutely-have-to-see-before-I-die for many years, so I was so excited to finally see them when I visited Madagascar a few months ago. I actually went well out of my way to see them in the wild. Unusually for lemurs Ring-Tails spend a lot of their time foraging on the ground – the other lemurs live much more arboreal lives. This makes Ring-Tailed Lemurs adaptable to various terrains, but they are still confined to very small pockets of suitable habitats in the south of Madagascar, making them an endangered species.

I photographed these adorable ring-tails in Berenty Reserve, located in the south of the island. They are very habituated to people so I thought they would be easy to photograph. Wrong!! Like most other lemurs they are fast and restless. But the biggest problem is that although you can approach them quite closely, they tend to go out of their way to ignore you – making it almost impossible to get any shots of them looking straight into the camera. Perhaps I was getting too good at being quiet and unobtrusive! They were only interested in me while I was having breakfast. They turn into incredibly devious little creatures when they catch a whiff of a croissant, so our breakfasts were mostly spent either shooing them away or else laughing watching them outwitting the lodge staff on several occasions, even though they were heavily armed with brooms.

Techs: Canon 7D | Canon 300 2.8 IS II | f 2.8 | 1/400 | ISO 200