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Annual Campaign and 2025 Highlights

Read the Duke Lemur Center Director’s annual appeal message and review our notable achievements for 2025! Please consider making a donation in support of our work and impact for the coming year and beyond! Questions? Please contact Mary Paisley, DLC Development Director, at mary.paisley@duke.edu. 

How Lemurs Are Laying the Groundwork for Interstellar Travel

After astronauts wake up from hibernation, will they still be able to drive the spacecraft? Duke researchers are studying lemurs to find out. By Susan Miller. Originally published in DukeTODAY on October 1, 2025. Read the original here. From fairy tales – such as Sleeping Beauty and Rip Van Winkle – to science fiction films, […]

RESEARCHER SPOTLIGHT: Tristan Franzetti

Posted September 2, 2025. Tristan is a Ph.D. candidate in Biology at Duke University. Research Focus: Mechanisms of niche partitioning in sympatric nocturnal lemurs In the forests of Madagascar, several species of small, nocturnal lemurs live side by side. They’re similar in size and habits, yet somehow they managed to evolve into separate species and […]

RESEARCHER SPOTLIGHT: Antonin Andriamahaihavana

Written by Antonin Andriamahaihavana, Ph.D. candidate at the University of Antananarivo. Originally published in LEMURS Magazine: The “Where” Issue in February 2025. His partnership with the DLC I obtained my master’s degree in Animal Conservation Biology at the Mention Zoologie et Biodiversité Animale (MZBA), University of Antananarivo, in 2020. My research focused on the ecology […]

A family of ring-tailed lemurs near a tall chainlink fenceline keeping them safely in their multi-acre forested enclosure

Announcing New, High Priority $5,000+ Gift Opportunities

Posted August 13, 2025. This year, the Duke Lemur Center—like many university-affiliated institutions—is navigating unprecedented financial challenges due to sweeping changes in federal funding. These shifts have created significant gaps in our budget, threatening the momentum we’ve built in lemur care, groundbreaking research, and global conservation. General fund gifts are our top priority right now. […]

Remembering Aristides

Posted July 30, 2025. Ring-tailed lemur Aristides, one of the Duke Lemur Center’s oldest residents, died on July 21, 2025 at the age of 32. Over the course of his three decades at the DLC, Aristides played a key role in non-invasive research studying lemur intelligence. He first made headlines in a 2004 article in […]

Updates from the International Primatological Society (IPS) Congress in Madagascar

By James Herrera, Ph.D. and DLC staff. Posted July 20, 2025. This week, the 30th International Primatological Society (IPS) Congress is proudly being hosted by Madagascar, for the first time since 1998! The IPS is dedicated to the study, conservation, and welfare of primates in the wild and within human care. Its biannual Congress is […]

VIDEO: “Closer Than You Think” Wins the Gold in Advertising Competition

  Established in 1966, the Duke Lemur Center is a world leader in the study, care, and protection of lemurs—Earth’s most threatened group of mammals. In this new video, we’ve partnered with CYLNDR Studios to explore a fresh way to tell our story. By responsibly using AI tools, we were able to create visuals that […]