Definitions
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition.
- noun Any of several small insectivorous primates of the genus Tarsius of Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines, being nocturnal and arboreal and having extremely large round eyes, a long tail, and long digits with nails except for the second and third toes, which have claws.
from The Century Dictionary.
- noun The malmag, an animal of the genus Tarsius: so called from the singular structure of the foot.
from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English.
- noun See
tarsius .
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun Used attributively as a species epithet
- noun An
insectivorous primate of theTarsiidae family, having very large eyes and long feet, native mainly to several islands ofSoutheast Asia .
from WordNet 3.0 Copyright 2006 by Princeton University. All rights reserved.
- noun nocturnal arboreal primate of Indonesia and the Philippines having huge eyes and digits ending in pads to facilitate climbing; the only primate that spurns all plant material as food living entirely on insects and small vertebrates
Etymologies
from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License
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Examples
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Bohol is also home to a tiny, endangered primate called the tarsier -- about the size of a chipmunk -- that hangs out in a jungle preserve where a guide will point out the long-fingered creatures wrapped around stalks of bamboo.
Bohol 2008
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The tarsier is a native of the East Indies jungles from Sumatra to the
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In the caption on another photograph, we learn that the tarsier is a "member of a little-known zoological group called Asiatic profimians," prompting us to wonder whether that group, if in favor of "fimians," is anti something.
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The smallest kind of tarsier was believed to be extinct until it was found last month on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi.
Pygmy tarsier, a monkey that defies categorization, not extinct afterall! Field Notes 2008
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The smallest kind of tarsier was believed to be extinct until it was found last month on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi.
Archive 2008-12-01 Field Notes 2008
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It was kind of hard to see the animals at night though I was like “Where the heck is that tarsier?”.
Weird Actually ♥ 2009
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It was kind of hard to see the animals at night though I was like “Where the heck is that tarsier?”.
Archive 2009-06-01 2009
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A Texas A&M anthropologist has rediscovered a pygmy tarsier in the wilds of Lore Lindu National Park, Sulawesi.
Archive 2008-11-01 2008
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Several scientists believed they were extinct until two Indonesian scientists trapping rats in the highlands of Sulawesi accidentally trapped and killed a pygmy tarsier in 2000.
Archive 2008-11-01 2008
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I have a tiny picture clipped from a magazine of a tarsier staring with its trademark surprised look at the camera with a big bug sticking out of its mouth.
Archive 2008-08-01 Heather McDougal 2008
chained_bear commented on the word tarsier
"'...tell me whether you have brought the tarsier for us to dissect.'
"Stephen shook his head, thinking of the simple-minded little creature that had gazed at him with its huge noctambulant's eyes, sitting just the other side of Ananda's lamp. 'I promised not to kill anything: and indeed, you know,' he said, 'a man would need a heart of brass to kill a tarsier.'"
--Patrick O'Brian, The Thirteen Gun Salute, 235
March 5, 2008
chained_bear commented on the word tarsier
Interesting article here.
December 14, 2008
Prolagus commented on the word tarsier
I have to say it is actually a "fake" story: as far as I know, nobody really thought that cute little beast was extinct. I think the researchers found a good way to get more grants in the future... (there's nothing wrong with that, though)
December 14, 2008