They belong to a relict lineage of primates that gave rise to monkeys and apes about 60 million years ago, and for the past 45 million years tarsiers have been largely unchanged. Although tarsiers are important "living fossils," they are difficult to study in the wild. Scarcely five inches high, they are nocturnal and subsist mostly on a diet of insects, along with some small vertebrates such as lizards and snakes.
Nathaniel Dominy, an associate professor of anthropology at Dartmouth, describes the tarsier's ultrasonic vocalizations as "extreme, and comparable to the highly specialized vocalizations of bats and dolphins, which are used primarily for echolocation."
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