Momo

"air"

- Someone's missing from your group, someone very important… Where's Momo?

Momo is a Winged-Lemur, and a loyal companion of Aang and his team. Momo is the only known lemur left, due to the genocide, however being that he is recognized by different characters thought out the series, he may not be the last of the species.

Momo is an intelligent creature, but is either incapable or selective of understanding human speech. He is also a glutton for any available fruit. Momo's behavior is more cat-like than that of real life lemurs. His wings appear to retract within the fur of his arms and he appears to have four fingers and two additional ones within the wing membrane that can be seen when he has his wings extended.

Discovery
In late 99 ASC, Momo began living in the ruins of the Southern Air Temple, either alone or with a family of lemurs. When Team Avatar visited the temple that year, Avatar Aang took interest in him and wanted to take him as his pet. Momo, however, was scarred by Sokka who "wanted to eat him" and ran off, both of the boys chasing after him. Eventually, Momo settled, Aang giving him the name "Momo" after seeing him eat a moon peach. Momo then began to accompany the Team on their journeys.

Journey to the North
In "The King of Omashu" Momo and Team Avatar went to Omashu and were "captured" by King Bumi. Aang decided to have Momo slip though an air vent to reach Appa for help. Unfortunately, Momo had eaten a large amount of fruit and was to big to fit. In "The Waterbending Scroll" Momo had a brief altercation with the Pirate Captain's Reptile Bird, but tied it to a post using a flag.

Traveling through the Earth Kingdom
In "Return to Omashu" Momo split from the group in search of food, because Team Avatar was to busy causing a pentapox outbreak. he then got in a scuffle with the New Ozai Governor's son, Tom Tom, who was intrigued by Momo's tail and followed him out out the city. In "The Swamp" Momo and Appa became separated from the rest of the team, and while wondering though the swamp, where attacked by a Foggy Swamp Tribe hunting party. Momo was captured in the chase by Tho, but later released when Huu and Team Avatar intervened. In the episode "Tales of Ba Sing Se" Momo, one night, continued looking for Appa, and in the process was attacked by a pack of three Pygmy Pumas. THee and the pygmy pumas was captured and taken to a local slaughterhouse. Luckily, Momo was able to remove the pin of his cage and the pygmy pumas' cage as well. After the escape the pygmy pumas took him to Appa's footprint. In the episode "The Guru" when Aang when to see Guru Pathik, Momo stayed behind in Ba Sing Se with Katara, where he was later captured by the Dai Li and Azula's team.

Personality
Momo is typical of his species; curious, intelligent with a touch of mischievousness. Momo is an asset to the team for his friendly and playful ways which helps to feed Sokka's humor as the straight man, this brings much needed levity to the group from time to time. Appa and Momo appear to have a special bond, which may be due to Linguistic understanding, or they have developed one of those 'special bonds' which is rare between different animal species. Momo is also adept in many situations, such as with the pygmy pumas that were chasing him for food only to find themselves on the menu. Momo provided their escape and at the same time made new friends. These traits all go along to making Momo cute and adorable by the team, as well as others that he meets throughout his travels.

Abilities
Momo uses his wings for gliding and flying. He can also swim short distances underwater whilst holding his breath.

Speculation

 * The gang found Momo in the abandoned Southern Air Temple. Since he was not preserved along with Aang, he has to have a family somewhere in the temple or winged-lemurs have extremely long life-spans.
 * In "The Swamp", Tho commented he had seen a lemur before in a traveling circus before, so Momo might not be the only winged-lemur left. Also the Pirate Captain in "The Waterbending Scroll".

Trivia



 * Aang named Momo for the Japanese word for "peach," the fruit which Momo seized from Sokka shortly before being named. The creators later revealed that they had actually named him that way because it apparently just seemed to fit, as he was originally supposed to be a robot called "Momo 3". He had even already been drawn eating a peach only for them to later find out that 'momo' was 'peach' in Japanese. The name Momo is also a common name for pets and such in Japan, much like "Fido" or "Lucky" are in America. Momo is also short for the Japanese dwarf flying squirrel, Momonga (モモンガ). A character from the anime Samurai Champloo has one named thus. In "The Tales of Ba Sing Se," Momo was written as 摸 摸 (Mō Mó) which means "touch imitate" in Chinese. It also can be seen as the phase in Chinese in which when a word is repeated twice it become a cute reference. So Mo meaning fur is repeated.
 * Avatar co-creator Bryan Konietzko has admitted that Momo is his favorite character to draw, and that a lot of his poses, mannerisms, and overall body language stem from the memories of his childhood cat, Buddy. This explains why Momo is so reminiscent of a typical housecat.
 * Momo resembles a mix between the Townsend's Big-eared Bat and a Ring-tailed Lemur.
 * In the commentary for "The Western Air Temple", one of the ideas Mike and Bryan had was for the group to find a whole group of Momos.

Relationships

 * Momo's Relationships