Madagascar: landmarks, animals & facts for kids

Madagascar is a large island country in the Indian Ocean, off the southeast coast of Africa across the Mozambique Channel. It is the fourth-largest island in the world, and its capital is Antananarivo, in the central highlands. Because the island has been separated from other land for tens of millions of years, about 90 percent of its plants and animals live nowhere else on Earth. Madagascar is famous for lemurs, chameleons, baobab trees and vanilla.

On My Earth Toy you can walk down the Avenue of the Baobabs, a dirt road lined with giant baobab trees in western Madagascar. Look for ring-tailed lemurs, the indri, the aye-aye, the fossa, the colour-changing panther chameleon, the bright red tomato frog and the greater vasa parrot.

Geography and nature

A backbone of highlands runs down the middle of Madagascar, with the highest peak, Maromokotro, at 2,876 metres. The east has steep rainforests, the west has dry forests and baobabs, and the south has the spiny forest, full of strange thorny plants. At Tsingy de Bemaraha, sharp limestone needles form a stone forest. Madagascar is home to more than 100 kinds of lemurs and about half of the world's chameleon species, but many are threatened as forests are cut down.

People, languages and culture

Malagasy and French are the official languages, and nearly everyone speaks Malagasy. Surprisingly, Malagasy is most closely related to languages spoken on the island of Borneo, thousands of kilometres away, because the first settlers sailed across the Indian Ocean from Southeast Asia; later settlers came from East Africa. Rice is eaten at almost every meal, and zebu cattle are a sign of wealth. Honouring ancestors is very important in Malagasy culture.

History in a nutshell

People from Southeast Asia arrived roughly 1,500 to 2,000 years ago, followed by settlers from mainland Africa, and Arab traders later visited the coast. Several kingdoms grew up on the island, and in the 19th century the Merina Kingdom of the highlands brought much of Madagascar under its rule. France made Madagascar a colony in 1896. The country became independent on 26 June 1960.