97 Primates of The Oriental Night INTRODUCTION We use the term Eastern tarsier for tarsiers from Sulawesi and surrounding islands. Until recently, these tarsiers were classified as two taxa, Tarsius spectrum and T. pumilus (Niemitz 1984a, Musser and Dagosto 1987). Groves et al (this volume) argued that T. tarsier is a senior synonym of T. spectrum, and has a type locality of Makassar (=Ujung Pandang), South Sulawesi (see Shekelle 2003, Brandon Jones et al. 2004). Several authors have offered evidence that Eastern Tarsiers are actually a constellation of related taxa (e.g. MacKinnon and MacKinnon 1980, Niemitz et al. 1991) including: T. sangirensis from Sangihe Island (Feiler 1990, Shekelle et al. 1997, Groves 1998), T. pelengensis from Peleng Island (Groves 2001), and T. dianae from areas of Central Sulawesi that flank the southern rim of Tomini Bay (Niemitz et al. 1991, Shekelle 2003, Brandon Jones et al. 2004). Our colony, which was founded in October 2001, has a mated pair of tarsiers from Pattanuang, near Maros, South Sulawesi, about 40 km northeast of Makassar, that are classified as T. tarsier. The EASTERN TARSIERS IN CAPTIVITY, PART II: A PRELIMINARY ASSESSMENT OF DIET Donatus Dahang 1 , Keely Severn 2 & Myron Shekelle 3 1 Department of Biology, Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, University of Indonesia Gedung A Lantai 2 FMIPA, Kampus Baru, Depok 16424, Republic of Indonesia 2 Oxford Brookes University, School of Social Sciences and Law, Department of Anthropology Oxford, OX3 0BP, Email: keelysevern@yahoo.co.uk 3 Center for Biodiversity and Conservation Studies, Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, University of Indonesia, Gedung A Lantai 2 FMIPA, Kampus Baru, Depok 16424, Republic of Indonesia tarsier@cbn.net.id ABSTRACT Five Eastern tarsiers were kept in cages, three males in one cage and a mated pair (a pregnant female) in the other cage. We classify these animals as Tarsius tarsier, T. sp (“Selayar Form”), and T. lariang (“Palu Form”). The tarsiers were offered and consumed a variety of 22 species of commercially available and wild-caught insects and lizards. On average, 15.4 g of food were consumed per tarsier per day. Four species accounted for over 95% of the diet: commercial crickets, commercial mealworms, the large-bodied nocturnal grasshopper Caedicia major, and house geckos. The tarsiers’ favored food items in order of preference were: crickets, house geckos, grasshoppers, and mealworms. They appeared to have a negative preference for mealworms and the large-bodied diurnal grasshopper, Austricris guttulosa. The tarsiers’ preference for specific items may be inversely proportional to that item’s scarcity in the tarsiers’ diet. Keywords: Tarsius tarsier, T. spectrum, T. lariang, Diet, Body Weight. colony also has two tarsiers (one adult male, one subadult male at time of capture) from Selayar Island southeast of Makassar that are classified as T. sp1 “Selayar form” (see Groves 1998, Nietsch and Babo 2001). There is also a single subadult male from Gimpu (Central Sulawesi) that is classified as T. lariang, see MacKinnon and MacKinnon 1980, Niemitz 1984b, Shekelle 2003, Merker and Groves 2006), this animal having arrived in November 2001. The mated pair is housed in one enclosure, and the remaining tarsiers are housed in a second enclosure (Severn et al. this volume for more on enclosure design) Wild Eastern tarsiers are obligate faunivores, as are all other known tarsiers (Sussman 1999, Gursky 2002). The diet consists principally of insects, but is supplemented with virtually any wild prey item that the tarsier can catch and eat, including snakes, birds, bats, and others. Food preference has not been studied systematically in the wild. Fitch-Snyder (2003) records 10 Eastern tarsiers having been kept in captivity outside of Indonesia, six of which date from the 1990’s at the Night Safari in Singapore. The other four are