Livingstone's fruit bat, although plentiful when discovered by explorer David Livingstone in 1863, has been reduced to a population of about 120, entirely on Anjouan.
A live specimen was caught in 1938 off southern Africa; other coelacanths have since been found in the vicinity of the Comoro Islands. Several mammals are unique to the islands themselves.
The national capital has been at Moroni since 1962. ==Anjouan== Anjouan, triangular shaped and forty kilometers from apex to base, has an area of 424 square kilometers.
Dzaoudzi, capital of the Comoros until 1962 and now Mayotte's administrative center, is situated on a rocky outcropping off the east shore of the main island.
Two volcanoes form the island's most prominent topographic features: La Grille in the north, with an elevation of 1,000 meters, is extinct and largely eroded; Kartala in the south, rising to a height of 2,361 meters, last erupted in 1977.
These include the Karthala scops-owl, Anjouan scops-owl and Humblot's flycatcher. Partly in response to international pressures, Comorians in the 1990s have become more concerned about the environment.
A British preservation group sent an expedition to the Comoros in 1992 to bring some of the bats to Britain to establish a breeding population. A hybrid of the common brown lemur (Eulemur fulvus) originally from Madagascar, was introduced by humans prior to European colonization and is found on Mayotte.
From April 17 to 19, 2005, the volcano began spewing ash and gas, forcing as many as 10,000 people to flee.
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Page generated on 2021-08-05