Posted created by Anna
Possibly nature’s least recognizable top predator—the Fossa—is a force to be reckoned with. To picture it, imagine a concoction of feline and canine facial features, a three and one-half foot tail, and a hunting regime that spans day and night. These qualities and more comprise the Fossa, one of the many endemic species only found on the island nation of Madagascar. And if you’re puzzling over where you may have heard of this strange creature, puzzle no more. Dreamwork’s 2005 film, Madagascar, featuring Alex the Lion and Marty the Zebra, is probably the single solitary cartoon rendition of Fossae to ever air. Presented more as an object of comedic relief than they are fearsome predators, the story’s real struggles revolve around the external and internal conflicts of island survival and Alex’s crisis of conscience rather than the Fossa. Though panic-inducing among the Lemur population in Madagascar, they ultimately are less formidable of an enemy as they ought to have been. Let's investigate a few of the character flaws Dreamworks either overlooked for the sake of creating a lighthearted tale or mistakenly failed to consider in their depiction of the fossa.
Whenever a Fossa appears in the film Madagascar, it is always with another Fossa. They are presented a bit like wolves, who hunt in packs to take down animals larger than themselves. This is inaccurate as it applies to Fossa however, since they are typically solitary animals, only found approximately every four kilometers. One exception to the habits of the normally reclusive species are male hunting parties, which Dreamworks certainly capitalizes on in their depiction of the Fossa. Another wolf-like attribute that Dreamworks associates with Fossae is its means of locomotion. Pictured running alongside jagged cliffs, the film suggests that this is the Fossa’s primary means of catching prey, when in reality, Fossas are actually better built for climbing. Semi-retractable claws with 180 degrees of ankle rotation and a long tail used for balance are just some of the features that enable Fossa to scale Madagascar’s tropical forests, bolting down trees headfirst if necessary in pursuit of lemurs, their largest dietary component. Their obsession with lemurs is perhaps a bit overplayed in the film, but I’ll leave that for Fossae to decide, because it is one detail that Dreamworks is roughly accurate on. Lemurs make up approximately 50% of the fossa’s diet, with birds, wild pigs, frogs, rodents, lizards, and tenereces constituting the rest. They certainly wouldn’t pass up the opportunity to snag a small penguin such as Skipper.
Though some Lemurs can reach up to 90 percent of a Fossa’s body size, their island perimeters ensure that the Fossa doesn’t run into any predator larger than itself. You would be mistaken if you expected them to ban together to take down a large Marty-sized zebra or Melvin-high giraffe. This might be commonplace among hyenas on the plains of Africa, but not so with Fossae. Yet they do ambush predators as is seen in the motion picture. They are also a good deal smaller than how they are rendered in film, weighing only twenty-or-so pounds and reaching up to six feet long from nose to tail-tip. The movie did get their abnormally large tail size correct; however, artists could have erred on the side of caution and made their lengthy body structure even more obvious. I do appreciate the combination of color among the fossa, however. There is a mixture of reddy-brown and as well as grey colourations, the latter being characteristic of young Fossae.
All things considered, I would say Madagascar did an adequate job in their animation of Madagascar’s most fearsome predator. While the Dreamworks crew did make some major alterations to the normally elusive, solitary creature to create the lovably dumb, lemur-manic creature viewers laugh at, I applaud the company for being the first in the business to let Fossa have a decisive role in its character palate.
Works Cited
“Fossa.” National Geographic Society. 2020. www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/mammals/f/fossa/.
“Fossa.” The Animal Facts. 2020. www.theanimalfacts.com/mammals/fossa/.
“Fossa zoo frankfurt-(jha)” by M.M. – selbst erstellt/own work by Littlenelle. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons – http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Fossa_zoo_frankfurt-(jha).JPG#mediaviewer/File:Fossa_zoo_frankfurt-(jha).JPG.
Madagascar. Directed by Eric Darnell and Tom McGrath, performance by Ben Stiller. Dreamworks Pictures, 2005.
Salmoni, Dave. “The Fabulous Fossa: Madagascar’s Greatest Predator.” Youtube, uploaded by Animal Planet. 06 Oct. 2018. www.bing.com/videos/search?q=what+to+know+ about+the+fossa.
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