A few things you might want to take into consideration: besides the “group size” factor (which somebody else has pointed out), there’s also the environmental factor here–that is, although the lemurs apparently are free to run throughout the whole zoo, the battle itself as presented in this paper takes place exclusively on the penguins’ turf. (And, presumably, the lemurs would be rather cold there, too.) I don’t know how you could get around that, unless perhaps by putting a tree in the penguin compound? (Hey, as long as this is a hypothetical situation.)

And the second important point is the sex differences in lemur fighting: as far as I know, scent glands are weapons excusively used by male lemurs against other male lemurs (and so I don’t know that they’d attempt to use it at all against another species), and females are the primary “real” fighters. So if it’s a male lemur that’s instigating the fight, he MIGHT use scent–although that’d be unlikely–but if it’s a female lemur, she wouldn’t. Since your lemur apparently has a sex change mid-paper, I’m not sure which you were shooting for.

Otherwise a good analysis. Based on your description of penguin combat abilities, I’d say that they’d still take the lemurs in a hand-to-hand fight. (Er, flipper-to-claw fight?)

*taking this way too seriously*

I mean, I guess I could change the title of the essay to “Who Would Win In A Hypothetical Fight Between Groups of Lemurs and Penguins In A Fictional Zoo Break,” just to make sure there’s no more confusion. What do you think?

Second, just a little helper: there were a couple of minor typos, but the most glaring is the gender inconsistency here:

“Back to our ring-tailed lemur trying to get to her apple core. He pads across the man-made ice floe…”.

The beginning of the second sentence should be “She” :)

Again, great job!

(Feel free not to publish this post–I’m just trying to help you out, but the whole Internet doesn’t need to know :))

-d