The number of Comorians living abroad has been estimated at between 80, 000 and 100, 000 ; during the colonial period, most of them lived in Tanzania, Madagascar, and other parts of East Africa.

Madagascar has lost 90 % of its eastern rainforests.

The island has been a possession of France since 1897, but is also claimed by Madagascar.

Mauritania does not use a decimal division of units, setting 1 ouguiya ( UM ) = 5 khoums, and Madagascar has 1 ariary = 5 iraimbilanja.

The autonomous state of Madagascar has since undergone four major constitutional periods, termed Republics.

This distinctive ecology has led some ecologists to refer to Madagascar as the " eighth continent ", and the island has been classified by Conservation International as a biodiversity hotspot.

Since the arrival of humans around 2, 350 years ago, Madagascar has lost more than 90 percent of its original forest.

The small island of Nosy Boroha off the northeastern coast of Madagascar has been proposed by some historians as the site of the legendary pirate utopia of Libertalia.

Since regaining independence, Madagascar has transitioned through four republics with corresponding revisions to its constitution.

Madagascar historically has remained outside the mainstream of African affairs, although it is a member of the Indian Ocean Commission, the Organization of African Unity ( now renamed the AU ) and the Non-Aligned Movement.

Madagascar has an embassy in Moscow.

Since the mid-1980s, the donor community, led by the World Bank and the USAID, has recognized that Madagascar is one of the world's most unusual natural wonders.

Research has demonstrated that tavy, a form of slash and burns agriculture, has been the largest contributor to environmental degradation in Madagascar.

The island has a small population of a few thousand inhabitants, mainly descended from Africans, Mixed race African and Europeans, British settlers, East India Company employees and indentured labourers from the South Asian sub-Continent, East Indies, Madagascar and China.

The UNCCD has 194 country Parties: Afghanistan, Albania, Algeria, Andorra, Angola, Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, The Bahamas, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belarus, Belgium, Belize, Benin, Bhutan, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Botswana, Brazil, Brunei Darussalam, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Burma, Burundi, Cambodia, Cameroon, Canada, Cape Verde, Central African Republic, Chad, Chile, the People's Republic of China, Colombia, Comoros, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Republic of the Congo, Cook Islands, Costa Rica, Côte d ' Ivoire, Croatia, Cuba, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Denmark, Djibouti, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Estonia, Ethiopia, European Union, Fiji, Finland, France, Gabon, The Gambia, Georgia, Germany, Ghana, Greece, Grenada, Guatemala, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Iran, the Republic of Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Kiribati, South Korea, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Latvia, Lebanon, Lesotho, Liberia, Libya, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macedonia, Madagascar, Malawi, Malaysia, Maldives, Mali, Malta, Marshall Islands, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mexico, Federated States of Micronesia, Moldova, Monaco, Mongolia, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Nauru, Nepal, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Niger, Nigeria, Niue, Norway, Oman, Pakistan, Palau, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Qatar, Romania, Russian Federation, Rwanda, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Samoa, San Marino, São Tomé and Príncipe, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Serbia, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, Solomon Islands, Somalia, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka, Sudan, Suriname, Swaziland, Sweden, Switzerland, Syria, Thailand, Tajikistan, Tanzania, Timor-Leste, Togo, Tonga, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Tuvalu, Uganda, Ukraine, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States, Uruguay, Uzbekistan, Vanuatu, Venezuela, Vietnam, Yemen, Zambia, Zimbabwe

Madagascar has an endemic genus, Astacoides, containing seven species.

Genetic analysis of African cattle has found higher concentrations of zebu genes all along the east coast of Africa, with especially pure cattle on the island of Madagascar, implying that the method of dispersal was cattle transported by ship.

Deep bays and well-protected harbors have attracted explorers, traders, and pirates from Europe, Africa, and the Middle East since ancient times ; thus, the area has served as an important bridge between Madagascar and the outside world.

Madagascar has been called the " Great Red Island " because of the prominence of red lateritic soils.

Madagascar has two seasons: a hot, rainy season from November to April ; and a cooler, dry season from May to October.

The island of Madagascar has been described as an " alternate world " or a " world apart " because of the uniqueness and rarity of many of its plant and animal species.

Madagascar was once covered almost completely by forests, but slash and burn practices for dry rice cultivation has denuded most of the landscape, especially in the central highlands.

Madagascar has a number of natural resources, including graphite, chromite, coal, bauxite, salt, quartz, tar sands, semi-precious stones and mica.

Widespread distribution of Permo-Carboniferous glacial sediments in South America, Africa, Madagascar, Arabia, India, Antarctica and Australia was one of the major pieces of evidence for the theory of continental drift.

For example, on the Madagascar high central plateau, comprising approximately ten percent of that country's land area, virtually the entire landscape is sterile of vegetation, with gully erosive furrows typically in excess of 50 meters deep and one kilometer wide.

The felids ' closest relatives are thought to be the asiastic linsangs, and at one remove the group of civets, hyenas, mongooses, and Madagascar carnivores, with whom they share the Suborder Feliformia.

Lemuridae is a family of prosimian primates native to Madagascar, and one of five families commonly known as lemurs.

Other groups continued to settle on Madagascar over time, each one making lasting contributions to Malagasy cultural life.

The ring-tailed lemur is one of over 100 known species and subspecies of lemur found only in Madagascar.

The few families and genera of reptile that have reached Madagascar have diversified into more than 260 species, with over 90 percent of these being endemic ( including one endemic family ).

The island is home to two-thirds of the world's chameleon species, including the smallest one known to date, and researchers have proposed that Madagascar may represent the origin of all chameleon species.

Most archaeologists estimate that the earliest settlers arrived in outrigger canoes from southern Borneo in successive waves throughout the period between 350 BCE and 550 CE, making Madagascar one of the last major landmasses on Earth to be settled by humans.

Many European sailors were shipwrecked on the coasts of the island, among them Robert Drury, whose journal is one of the few written depictions of life in southern Madagascar during the 18th century.

At $ 18 million per annum the environment program of USAID / Madagascar is the second largest American program in Madagascar, and one of the largest programs of its kind in the world.

Amongst the most significant taxes levied on imports was a requirement for all ships trading with Madagascar to deliver one slave.

The bulk of Western Australia consists of the extremely old Yilgarn craton and Pilbara craton which merged with the Deccan Plateau of India, Madagascar and the Karoo and Zimbabwe cratons of Southern Africa, in the Archean Eon to form Ur, one of the oldest supercontinents on Earth ( 3 – 3. 2 billion years ago ).

Three species of Malagasy Hippopotamus became extinct during the Holocene on Madagascar, one of them within the past 1, 000 years.

In the Indian Ocean and Arabian Sea, one of Cabral's ships discovered Madagascar ( 1501 ), which was partly explored by Tristão da Cunha ( 1507 ); Mauritius was discovered in 1507, Socotra occupied in 1506, and in the same year Lourenço de Almeida visited Ceylon.

* The Colosseum was featured as one of the locations of Vitaly's travelling circus in the animated film, Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted.

At one stage, the pirate population of Madagascar numbered close to 1000.

Many European sailors were shipwrecked on the coasts of the island, among them Robert Drury, whose journal is one of the few written depictions of life in southern Madagascar during the 18th century.

resulted in a journal giving one of the few written depictions of southern Madagascar in the 18th century.

Despite a wealth of abundant and diverse natural resources, Madagascar is one of the world ’ s poorest countries.

Malayo-Polynesian languages are now spoken across a huge area from Madagascar to Hawaii, Easter Island and New Zealand, but form only one branch of the Austronesian family, the rest of whose branches are found only on Taiwan.

A sister species of the pygmy hippopotamus may have been the little-studied Malagasy pygmy hippopotamus ( Hexaprotodon madagascariensis or Hippopotamus madagascariensis ), one of three recently extinct species from Madagascar.