Silky sifakas are only found in a small region of northeastern Madagascar. They are sensitive to forest disturbance and sadly their habitat is declining at an alarming rate.

Silky Sifaka Mother and Infant. Photo by Jeff Gibbs.

Adopt a Silky sifaka and you will help the Duke Lemur Center’s efforts to protect and save these fascinating and beautiful creatures. Not only will you receive the general information you would typically receive with our Adopt-A-Lemur package, but a rare and special photo of Silky sifakas and information outlining the special projects we are leading in Marojejy National Park and the wider SAVA region to save the Silky sifakas and all of the other magnificent animals in that region. Be part of this special and critical conservation effort! It is a fun, educational, and conservation-minded package to give the lemur lover in your life. Click here to order your package on line. You may choose from any donation level for this special limited edition package. Just be sure to select “Silky sifaka” in the drop down field. You can also send a check directly to:
Duke Lemur Center
c/o Adopt a Lemur Program
3705 Erwin Road
Durham, NC 27705

With the weather turning warm, the sun trying to shining a little longer every day and the lemurs free-ranging, DLC staff  took the opportunity to invite our top supporters out for evenings of food, fellowship, lemurs and the chance to say, “Thank you for all you do!”

The Duke Lemur Center is the world’s largest and most diverse lemur center, yes. We’re the world’s best lemur center because of the amazing people that stand behind us.

To all of our supporters, whether through your time, resources or talents, Thank You for standing with us!

Spring Release Dinner for our top supporters May 20, 2013 and Volunteer Appreciation Mixer May 21, 2013

(Photos by David Haring)

When a ring-tailed lemur gets lost in the wild, she opens her mouth into a round shape, as though she is about to whistle, and lets out a “Miaouuuu!” sound like a cat’s. This vocalization, called a contact call, is thought to maintain group cohesion among ring-tailed lemurs in the wild. Ring-tailed lemurs at the Duke Lemur Center often made this sound while they worked in rooms with us. We noticed that when certain lemurs made a contact call, many group members responded –the building wing was filled with a chorus of meows. For other lemurs, however, the group was silent, even if they called many times.

Studies have shown that contact calls are individually distinct when you look at them on a sonogram, a display that shows the frequency of sounds over time –every lemur has her own voice. We hope to understand the social bonds that underlie these responses. Do lemurs have “friends” that they respond to more than others? Currently, we are still in the process of recording vocalizations for future experiments. We follow the lemurs around for several hours most days of the week, standing below trees when they climb up high in the forest, or in an inside hallway when they play inside. Sometimes they are silent, just sleeping, and other times, everyone starts to vocalize at once!

Rachna Reddy
Lab Manager
Hare Research Group
Duke University

Top 25 Most Endangered Primates list 3 times in a row.

Habitat reduced by more than 80% within 20-25 years.

Very high levels of exploitation from hunting and capture as pets.

One of three primates with blue eyes.

Only 3 breeding females in captivity in North America.

Two of them just gave birth!

World, meet Hiddleston and Poots! The Duke Lemur Center is proud to announce the births of two blue-eyed black lemurs, one male – Hiddleston – and one female – Poots. Named for actor Tom Hiddleston, Hiddleston was born to mother West and father Hopkins on March 24, 2013. He weighed a healthy 82 grams at birth.  Poots, named for Imogen Poots, was born on March 27, 2013, to parents Margret and Tarantino. Poots weighed 92 grams at birth.

Adult blue-eyed black lemurs typically bear singletons, although twins are also common, at least at DLC (two twin pairs born in the last 4 years). Gestation usually lasts 120-130 days: Margret was pregnant with Poots for 127 days. At birth, male and females have a similar color fur to their mothers, a bright orange-caramel color and have the characteristic crystal blue-grey eyes. Males typically begin to develop darker fur turning to black within a few weeks after birth, while female blue-eyed black lemurs will remain orange. Hiddleston already has a dark head and face with lighter fur on the rest of his body.

Both West and Margret are first-time mothers, and both are doing a fantastic job with their new little ones. The successful births of Hiddleston and Poots are vital to the conservation of this species. The Duke Lemur Center currently houses North America’s only breeding female blue-eyed black lemurs: West, Margret and Foster. These females hold the key to the conservation of this species of lemur because of dramatic habitat loss in the wild and the limited breeding population in captivity. With our expert care (and some very handsome blue-eyed black lemur males), we are hoping for many more babies in the future to continue to preserve such rare, beautiful lemurs.

Foster

In this series, we’ll help you get to know the animals at the Lemur Center just as well as the keepers that care for them. You can learn a little about their personalities, likes, and favorite past-times without having to scoop up the poop! We call it “Prosimian Personalities.”

For the second installment of Prosimian Personalities, meet Foster, an adult blue-eyed black lemur (Eulemur flavifrons). Foster is a very special, very valuable lemur:  1) she is currently the only successful breeding blue-eyed black lemur in captivity in North America; 2) this species is one of the top 25 most endangered primates in the world; and, 3) it’s a critically endangered species as ranked by the International Union of the Conservation of Nature.

Perhaps William Shakespeare left advice for Foster’s mate Hopkins and free-ranging neighbors when he penned the play Julius Caesar saying, “Beware the ides of March” (Act 1, scene 2, 21). Born on March 15, 1996, Foster commands respect from everyone. Generally speaking, lemurs live in female-dominant social groups. Blue-eyed black lemurs are no exception, and Foster easily keeps Hopkins on his toes, displacing him from sunny resting spots and getting first pick of food. To his credit, Hopkins is a gentleman and knows his place at the bottom of the social hierarchy – he moves out of the way when Foster comes near. Of course, there is plenty of food for everyone, so Hopkins gets his goodies, too.

Foster and family live in one of the most active natural habitat enclosures at the lemur center. A family of four Coquerel’s sifakas and ten ring-tailed lemurs share the forest enclosure with Foster, her daughter West and Hopkins.  Foster rules the forest; like Hopkins, the ring-tailed lemurs and sifakas move out of her way.

Most recently, Foster and family have joined the ranks of painting lemurs. Guests to the center who participate in the “Painting with Lemurs” tour might meet Foster and receive beautiful artwork from all three lemurs. Foster often spends most of the painting time observing, but she will drop down from her shelf perch to grab a dried cranberry and add some finishing touches. While she observes, Hopkins takes the opportunity to get his fill of dried cranberries.

If you ever visit the Lemur Center for a “Painting with Lemurs,” “Behind the Scenes,” or “Walking with Lemurs” tour, you may get to meet Foster. Just make sure you curtsy!

]]> http://lemur.duke.edu/prosimian-personalities-foster/feed/ 0 http://lemur.duke.edu/new-poster-will-promote-conservation-in-sava-region/ http://lemur.duke.edu/new-poster-will-promote-conservation-in-sava-region/#comments Tue, 12 Feb 2013 19:47:02 +0000 niki http://lemur.duke.edu/?p=3459

The DLC SAVA Conservation initiative is working through a variety of activities with local communities to protect  forests and lemurs in Madagascar. Photographer and conservationist Louise Jasper has helped us to develop a poster which speaks out against the hunting of lemurs and the keeping of lemurs as pets. The posters will be distributed to schools and posted in other central gathering points in the SAVA region.

Translated, the poster says:

We inherited from our ancestors a healthy forest complete with all the lemurs, birds and other animals that live there.

Should it not remain undisturbed for our children? 

The magnificent and unique animals of Madagascar should not be eaten, and should not be kept as pets in your house.

Thanks, Louise, for your help in creating the poster! 

In celebration of Darwin Day, I thought it appropriate to broach the topic of evolution – a unifying force for all primates, human and nonhuman alike.   Here at the DLC, we are a home to the tiny mouse lemur and to the graceful sifaka and then everything in between.  Now add in monkeys to the mix.   And don’t forget the apes (including us humans!).   Voila! You have the makings of the amazingly diverse Primate Order.  But what’s truly amazing is that all primates, from aye ayes to gorillas, have one fundamental thing in common: an ancestor.

We did not evolve from chimpanzees.   Darwin never claimed that we did.  But such misconceptions fuel the controversy that surrounds evolution and take away from scientific advancements.  Humans and chimpanzees evolved from a common ancestor approximately 6 million years ago, and that common ancestor was as different from today’s chimpanzees as we are.   Now go back 70 million years!  Based on molecular evidence, that is when a population of rodent-like mammals first evolved definitive primate traits: grasping hands, forward facing eyes, and a relatively large brain (among other things).  Modern day prosimians (the lemurs, lorises, and bushbabies) most closely resemble those first primates, and that’s one of the many reasons that the research done at the Duke Lemur Center is so important and so interesting!

Researchers from around the world come to the DLC to study these unique primates, not only to better understand and therefore better conserve their wild counterparts, but also to understand our own evolutionary history: genetic diversity, cognition, play behavior, mate preference, locomotion, metabolism and energetics, communication…  And these studies would not be possible were it not for Charles Darwin, the men and women that prompted the Scientific Revolution before him, and the men and women that have continued the advancement of scientific knowledge since.

Happy Darwin Day!

-Erin Ehmke, Ph.D

DLC Research Manager

Join the staff of the Duke Lemur Center (DLC) in welcoming our newest Coquerel’s sifaka – Beatrice of Swabia (Beatrice for short). Born December 19, 2012, Beatrice weighed 107 grams at birth – a perfect weight for a newborn sifaka. She is in excellent health and growing leaps and bounds, weighing 257 grams at her last weighing appointment. She was born to parents Rodelinda (5 years old) and Marcus (8 years old) and also lives with her sister Bertha of Sulzbach (23 months old). Rodelinda’s family all received names from figures in the Holy Roman Empire, hence Berttha’s and Beatrice’s interesting titles. All is well with the family. Beatrice is spending most of her time clinging to Rodelinda, but Marcus and Bertha are also getting some time to groom and hold the infant.

Beatrice has been steadily gaining weight and clinging tightly to her mother’s fur, both signs of a healthy infant. Keepers and veterinarians weigh infants daily for the first 3 days then again on day 5 and 7, then twice a week until a month old, followed by weekly weighing for the next few months. After that, the infant is placed on the adult weighing schedule of every month. Regular weighing helps the staff ensure that the infant is thriving.

New babies, like Beatrice, are incredibly valuable to the continued research and conservation of this species. Coquerel’s sifakas represent the only lemurs in the family Indriidae in captivity in North America, a diverse family of lemurs including ten diurnal species known for their unique sideways, ballet-like form of locomotion. The sifakas at the Lemur Center are also some of the only leaf-eating lemurs in captivity making comparative studies on diet and nutrition possible. Coquerel’s sifaka are endangered in the wild. Deforestation and hunting for food threaten their daily existence in Madagascar where only roughly 10% of the island remains as native vegetation. In the past, sifakas were protected by local taboos against hunting; however, as cultural stigmas and superstitions break down in Madagascar, more people turn to sifakas as a food source.

Andrea Katz, the DLC animal curator, explained that the Duke Lemur Center was the first place to ever successfully breed sifakas. “Sifaka are really one of the Lemur Center’s flagship species,” she said. “We’ve learned a lot over the years about sifaka behavior, breeding behavior, mother-infant behavior…I think it’s fair to say that the Lemur Center is really viewed as the expert on sifaka breeding management.” Only 56 Coquerel’s sifakas live in captivity. The Lemur Center owns every single one and manages them either on-site or through cooperative breeding loans with 9 other institutions across the United States. The Lemur Center’s Registrar and Photographer, David Haring, is the Coordinator for the Association of Zoos and Aquariums’ Species Survival Plan for sifaka. The threshold for a sustainable captive population is set at 50 breeding individuals, so the population is hovering at the edge of sustainability. Still, with the world’s experts on sifaka care and more than half of the captive sifaka housed at the DLC, Beatrice has a bright future ahead.

*Photos taken by David Haring, copyright David Haring and Duke Lemur Center. Please contact cts14@duke.edu for info on using images. Thanks!

The latest installment from the Unusual Creatures project hit the Internet yesterday with the launch of a new video series exploring unusual creatures and the music they inspire. For the first episode, The Secret Life of Lemurs, host and composer Michael Hearst visits the Duke Lemur Center to meet the aye-aye, a strange and unusual creature if ever one existed. The video explores the fascinating world of aye-ayes and the process of composing musical pieces for unusual creatures. The Kronos Quartet performs the piece “Aye-Aye” while Hearst talks about the creature and tours the Lemur Center. Hearst and the Quartet also talk about the ways their violins and cellos can reproduce the sounds of the aye-aye, like tapping on wood to find bugs or melodies designed to invoke the imagery of an aye-aye walking through the trees at night. Fun, educational and musical, Hearst and the Kronos Quartet help viewers learn about Madagascar’s endangered aye-aye through imaginative musical composition. The best part is that the premier episode featured lemurs!

You can read about Hearst’s visit to the DLC from an earlier post, “Aye-Ayes Bring Musical Inspiration to Hearst and Kronos Quartet.”