galago

noun

ga·​la·​go gə-ˈlā-(ˌ)gō  -ˈlä- 

plural galagos

: bush baby

Illustration of galago

• bush baby or galago

Did you know?

There are six species of galagos, small nocturnal tree-dwelling primates found in forests of sub-Saharan Africa. Galagos are gray, brown, or reddish or yellowish brown animals with large eyes and ears, soft woolly fur, and a long tail. They are active at night, feeding on fruits, insects, and small birds. Galagos have elongated hind limbs that enable them to leap with great agility. Smaller forms, such as the bush baby, are particularly active and agile. Galagos range from 4½–6 in (11–16 cm) long, excluding the 7–8-in (18–20-cm) tail, to 12–15 in (30–37 cm), excluding the 16½–18½-in (42–47-cm) tail.

Examples of galago in a Sentence

Recent Examples on the Web

The upshot here is that the best biological jumpers, like the galago, simply have the biggest jumping muscles relative to their body mass. —IEEE Spectrum, 4 Mar. 2023

But a capuchin monkey, with eight times as many cortical neurons as a small primate called a galago, has only 11 times as much white matter. —Douglas Fox, Discover Magazine, 20 Aug. 2018

The first, a mohol galago — better known as a South African bushbaby — was born April 14 to mother Kirby and father Keanu. —Amy Schwabe, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 18 June 2021

Some species, like the South African galago, hang out in acacia trees on the savanna. —National Geographic, 19 Nov. 2019

Some species of galago can leap more than seven feet straight into the air. —National Geographic, 19 Nov. 2019

Here, a joyous catalog teems with life, both familiar like the American black bear and African lion and unfamiliar like the Amazon River dolphin and Senegal galago. —San Francisco Chronicle, 25 Apr. 2018

His further research determined that nature's best continuous jumper is the galago, or bush baby, a nocturnal primate native to Africa. —Erin Biba, Scientific American, 1 May 2017

The galago's agility metric was twice that of any contemporary jumping robot. —Erin Biba, Scientific American, 1 May 2017

Word History

Etymology

borrowed from New Latin & French, perhaps borrowed from Wolof golo "the monkey Erythrocebus patas" + -g, class marker + -u, relative and genitive marker

Note: This etymology is entirely hypothetical, in that the wordʼs source language is unknown, and Wolof uses a different word for Galago senegalensis. The word galago is first recorded in a description of the animal by Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire ("Mémoire sur les rapports naturels des Makis Lemur, L. et Description dʼune espèce nouvelle de Mammifère," Magasin encyclopédique, ou Journal des sciences, des lettres et des arts, tome premier [1796], pp. 20-50). Geoffroy had obtained a skull and apparently a picture (tableau) of the animal from the naturalist Michel Adanson, who had spent the years 1748-55 in Senegal. According to Geoffroy, Adanson reported that "the animal whose head he had brought back was known there under the name galago" (" … quʼon y connoissoit lʼanimal dont il avoit rapporté le tête sous le nom de galago"). In a preceding sentence Geoffroy refers to specimens that Adanson had found in Galam, and it is unclear if the "there" in the later sentence refers to Galam (at the time a Soninke kingdom in northeastern Senegal) or to Senegal in general.

First Known Use

1817, in the meaning defined above