Reproduction
A golden-crowned sifaka infant rides on his mother's back. Click image for larger version.
In Madagascar these sifakas breed in January, and births occur in July after a gestation of 165 to 170 days. Like all sifakas, the young will hold on to the mother's belly fur for the first few weeks of life, and will then switch to a jockey position on her back when they get older. At about the age of five or six months, the infants are fully weaned, and from this point on their mothers will refuse any attempts by the infants to "hitch a ride," except during extremely stressful events such as a predator attack. Fortunately for the infants, weaning time coincides with the season of very high availability of the tender new growth most favored by the animals, so the young have little difficulty obtaining high quality food.