LIFE ON THE EDGE
Hereareafewcreaturesyou’ll
spotinTsingydeBemaraha.AMADAGASCARKESTREL
PERCHESATOPAPEAKIN
THEPARK.HENKEL’S
LEAF-TAILED
GECKO
MADAGASCAR
GIANT HOGNOSE
SNAKEMADAGASCAR
PYGMY KINGFISHERCOMMERSON’S
LEAF-NOSED BATBY KRISTIN BAIRD RATTINItowersare home to some
seriously strangespecies.
forbidding forest of pointed
peaks soars above the sur-
rounding jungle landscape. This
surreal limestone lair looks like
a challenge straight out of a
video game. The eye-popping
spot—called Tsingy de Bemaraha national
park and reserve—is located in western
Madagascar, an island off the southeast coast
of Africa.
It’s easy to see why the word tsingy (pro-
nounced sing-EE) means “where one cannot
walk barefoot” in the local Malagasy lan-
guage. But in this brutal landscape, many
creatures make their home among thesestone towers where only
a few humans dare to set foot.WATER AT WORK
Around 200 million years ago, the limestone
plateau that makes up Tsingy de Bemaraha
was part of the seabed. Over millions of years,
the limestone layers below the water slowly
rose above the sea level. Heavy rains continu-
ally sculpted the land, altering its shape.
“When rainwater flows into cracks in the
landscape, it dissolves the rock,” says Martón
Veress, a geomorphologist (someone who
studies the evolution of the Earth’s surface).
The constant dissolution created crevasses,or deep open cracks, across the top layer of
land. Over time, the tops of the rocks sharp-
ened into the knife-like points visible today.CREATURE FEATURES
You won’t find many humans venturing
among those spiky limestone towers—just a
few locals, plus some brave scientists and
tourists with rugged rock-climbing gear. But
you’ll spot plenty of animals in the park.
“The biodiversity of Tsingy de Bemaraha is
unique even when compared to the rest of
Madagascar, which hosts many animals found
nowhere else on the planet,” primatologist
Travis Steffens says. “The tsingy is like its own20
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Africa