The western tarsier is a small primate that spends the night in trees. It has large eyes and leaps between branches to catch insects and other small animals.
It has large eyes, gray-to-brown fur and a long scaly tail ending in a tuft of hair.
A study of the Bornean subspecies of the western tarsier surveyed two forest patches on a university campus in Sarawak, Malaysian Borneo. Capture-effort estimates were 38 individuals per km² in secondary forest and 28 per km² in a rehabilitated forest. The captures behind those estimates were very different: fourteen animals in secondary forest and only two in the restored patch.
In both sites, the animals were clumped rather than evenly distributed. Finding tarsiers in a planted rehabilitation patch is noteworthy, but two captures cannot show that it functions like secondary forest. The authors also lacked wet- and dry-season sampling. Repeated surveys across seasons and more patches would help separate habitat use from differences in detection and sampling effort.
An extinction-risk assessment has not been added yet.
The Bornean subspecies was recorded in both secondary and planted rehabilitation forest on one Sarawak campus. Only two individuals were captured in the rehabilitation patch, and density estimates depend on patch size, terrain and capture method. The study does not show that restored forest is equivalent to secondary forest. Repeated seasonal surveys that keep forest history distinct can clarify local use; species-wide abundance and formal status were not assessed.