Qualla: Ankarana Special Reserve: Madagascar's Limestone Labyrinth

Ankarana Special Reserve: Madagascar's Limestone Labyrinth: Introduction

Tue, 24 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bernard DUPONT from FRANCE, CC BY-SA 2.0. The Malagasy word tsingy means "where one cannot walk barefoot," and the name is not metaphor. In Ankarana Special Reserve, 150-million-year-old Jurassic limestone has been carved by rainfall and seismic forces into channels and ridges so sharp they will cut through boot leather. Between these blade-like formations, deep gorges drop into darkness, and cave passages wind for over 100 kilometers beneath the massif - the longest cave systems in Madagascar and likely on the entire African continent. Established as a protected area in 1956, Ankarana sits in the north of Madagascar, a plateau that looks from above like a crumbling fortress, its ramparts broken into separate spires of tower karst to the south while its interior hides canyons choked with basalt boulders and draped in ribbons of flowstone.

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Image: Bernard DUPONT from FRANCE | CC BY-SA 2.0

Ankarana Special Reserve: Madagascar's Limestone Labyrinth: A World Below the Surface

Tue, 24 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Lemurbaby, CC BY-SA 4.0. La Grotte d'Andrafiabe, one of the most accessible caves in the reserve, extends for at least eight kilometers of horizontal passages - and it is just one entrance to the underground network. Around 100 kilometers of cave passages have been mapped within the massif, and expeditio...

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Image: Lemurbaby | CC BY-SA 4.0

Ankarana Special Reserve: Madagascar's Limestone Labyrinth: Lemurs of the Lost World

Tue, 24 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Charles J. Sharp, CC BY-SA 4.0. When British expeditions first began cataloguing Ankarana's wildlife in the 1980s, the discoveries were striking enough to inspire a book title. Dr. Jane Wilson-Howarth's travel narrative Lemurs of the Lost World chronicled what the teams found: subfossil remains of giant extinct...

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Image: Charles J. Sharp | CC BY-SA 4.0

Ankarana Special Reserve: Madagascar's Limestone Labyrinth: Songbirds in Formation

Tue, 24 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tonton Bernardo, CC BY-SA 3.0. During the 1986 expedition, ornithologists Phil Chapman and Jean-Elie Randriamasy documented 65 bird species from 32 families at Ankarana - nearly a third of all bird species that breed in Madagascar. What caught their attention was not just the diversity but the behavior. Small ...

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Image: Tonton Bernardo | CC BY-SA 3.0

Ankarana Special Reserve: Madagascar's Limestone Labyrinth: Ghosts in the Limestone

Tue, 24 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bernard DUPONT from FRANCE, CC BY-SA 2.0. The subfossil record at Ankarana reads like a catalogue of what Madagascar has lost. Bones of the sloth lemur Babakotia radofilai, an animal that hung from branches like its namesake, were first described from specimens found here. The massive Megaladapis - sometimes called the k...

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Image: Bernard DUPONT from FRANCE | CC BY-SA 2.0