04/10/2026
In Bohol, a boy grew up catching tarsiers so his father could stuff them and sell them to tourists.
Today, that tiny animal carries his name.
A TOY THAT WAS ALIVE
The Philippine tarsier is about the size of your fist, and each of its eyes is about as big as its whole brain. In Bohol, one local name for it is maomag.
Carlito Pizarras grew up in Corella, Bohol, when tarsiers were so common you could pick them off the trees at night.
His father was a taxidermist, and of everything he stuffed and sold, tarsiers sold best. Buyers told him it was as if God had made the perfect children's toy.
"When I was ten years old, I would go out with an air r***e," Carlito told VICE.
At 12, he tried keeping one alive instead. The only book he could find said tarsiers ate charcoal. 😅
So he went into the forest at night and watched. The tarsier with the sooty face wasn't eating the burnt log, it was digging for bugs inside it.
By 15, he was keeping a whole group alive on crickets.
THE TARSIER MAN
But by his 20s, the tarsiers were getting hard to find. Trapping and slash-and-burn farming had pushed them deep into the forest, and he realized trappers like him were part of the reason.
"I don't want to kill the tarsiers anymore," he told his father.
Catching them wasn't even against the law back then. So when people at his little store talked about trapping one, he'd bluff: "That's five years in jail and a fine." 😂
His neighbors laughed at him. They called him "tarsier man" and gossiped that he was part monkey.
He kept going anyway. He bred dozens of tarsiers at home, then hiked deep into the forest to set them free.
A NAME THAT STAYED
In 1996, people in Bohol started the Philippine Tarsier Foundation. A year later, they hired Carlito.
In 1997, President Fidel Ramos banned hunting, killing or keeping a Philippine tarsier. Catching a tarsier was finally against the law.
That same year, he was invited to Malacañang Palace to present a pair of tarsiers to Prince Charles. "I was nervous that the tarsiers would run away or jump onto the prince," he said.
Then in 2010, scientists gave the Philippine tarsier a new scientific name to honor his work. It's now Carlito syrichta.
In 2016, he estimated the sanctuary in Corella had gone from fewer than ten tarsiers in 1996 to more than a hundred. Visitors there can look, but not touch.
Years earlier, when researchers asked why he spent so much time on tarsiers, his answer was simple: "I didn't want them to be gone."
And the nickname his neighbors used to tease him? He grew proud of it. "I'm the tarsier man," he would tell visitors, with a grin and his hand out, a magazine reported in 2000.
Source: National Wildlife, 2000; VICE, 2016; Proclamation No. 1030, 1997; International Journal of Primatology, 2010 →
