The time is now

Duke Lemur Center

1 day ago

Thank you for celebrating National Fossil Day with us 💙

➡️ lemur.duke.edu/museum-support

Our incredible staff members, students, and interns at the Duke Lemur Center Museum of Natural History travel across the globe to locate, collect, accession, and prepare the fossils in our collection. Our collection includes 55 million year-old, lemur-like primate fossils from Wyoming; 37 to 28 million year-old anthropoid fossils from Egypt; 19 to 7 million year-old ape fossils from Egypt and India; 13 million year-old New World monkeys from Colombia; and 10,000 to 500 year-old lemur fossils from Madagascar 🌍

Donations play a huge part in the curation and preservation of our fossil specimens and in field expeditions. If you enjoyed all of the content you've seen today and want to help support the DLCMNH, you can visit the link above to make a donation—every little bit helps a lot 🥰 ... See MoreSee Less

Duke Lemur Center

1 day ago

Check out our incredible undergrads! 🤩

At the Duke Lemur Center Museum of Natural History, Duke students can work with DLC paleontologists in all stages of paleontological research, from collecting fossils to fossil stabilization, accessioning, scanning, sampling, and publication. One such student is Orion Kornfeld, a Duke undergraduate student who began working at the DLCMNH as a freshman. Orion learned fossil preparation and conducted research on the ancient diets of giant hyraxes that lived in Egypt 34 million years ago 🌍

This past summer, Duke undergraduate Erika Kraabel traveled to Madagascar to help the museum team collect lemur bones at a research site called Bezá Mahafaly. Erika’s story will be featured in the January 2025 issue of the DLC annual magazine, so keep an eye out 👀

Orion's story was featured in the 2022-2023 issue of the DLC annual magazine, and you can also read it on our website at lemur.duke.edu/student-spotlight-reseach-in-the-dlc-fossil-collection/ ... See MoreSee Less

Duke Lemur Center

2 days ago

Who better to celebrate #TongueOutTuesday than fat-tailed dwarf lemur brothers Albatross, Bustard, and Elephant Bird? 😛

Volunteer photographer David Haring brought "Hearts a Bustin" berries to the five-year-old fat-tailed triplets a couple of weeks ago. While this North Carolina native plant is a favorite of birds, deer, and other local wildlife, it wasn't a hit with these boys! They much prefer the sugary dried fruit they've been chowing down on the past few months to bulk up for hibernation season 🍒

📸: David Haring ... See MoreSee Less

Duke Lemur Center

5 days ago

Meet the residents of Natural Habitat Enclosure 1! 👋

Ring-tailed lemurs Fritz and Narcissa and Coquerel's sifakas Ferdinand and Gertrude are the four lemurs who spend their days out in NHE 1, a fenced-in section of forest that spans about an acre. Since lemurs are incredibly territorial, we can't send two groups of the same species out to free-range in the same enclosure. We try to pair species that utilize different vertical space in the forest—while ring-tailed lemurs are our most terrestrial species, sifakas spend the majority of their time in the trees, meaning that the two groups are rarely competing for space. For the most part, these pairs don't interact across species, but staff members will occasionally spot Gertrude making a play face at the ring-tails, or Fritz stink-fighting towards the sifakas 🍃

Fun fact: most of these individuals have famous fathers! Gertrude and Ferdinand's dad, Jovian, was the Coquerel's sifaka who played the titular Zoboomafoo, and Narcissa's dad is the ring-tail representative for our Adopt a Lemur program, Randy 😱

📸: David Haring ... See MoreSee Less

Duke Lemur Center

6 days ago

Did you know that World Lemur Day is coming up on October 25th? 😱

Whether you live locally or halfway around the world, you can celebrate World Lemur Day with your favorite prosimians by purchasing merch from our online shop! We have a fantastic selection of some of our best-selling items available for purchase through Duke Stores, including these adorable shirts, crewnecks, tank tops, onesies, ornaments, and plushes. Of course, you can always stop by our Lemur Landing Gift Shop and purchase these and other items in person! 🛒

➡️ lemur.duke.edu/onlineshop or stop by in person from 10am-4pm, six days a week (we are closed on Tuesdays)

📸: Abby Flyer ... See MoreSee Less

Duke Lemur Center

6 days ago

🤩 THIS WEEKEND 🤩

Good news: we have the weather and staffing to run an off-season General Tour this Sunday 10/13! Like our summer General Tours, this tour is an open house format, and guests can arrive any time before 11:30am to walk around and see the lemurs. Because the lemurs' housing needs may mildly affect their visibility to guests, we are offering a discounted off-season rate of $15 per person for ages 18+ and $12 per person for ages 3-17 (children 2 and under are free) 🥳

We are also able to run off-season Walking with Lemurs tours this Saturday (10/12), Sunday (10/13), and Monday (10/14) at 10:30am! Tickets are limited, so make sure to grab them before they sell out. Just like during the summer, our Walking with Lemurs tours are $75 per person and open to guests ages 10+ 🤗

Tickets MUST be purchased in advance to attend! Tickets and information are available on our website at lemur.duke.edu/GT for the General Tour and lemur.duke.edu/wwl for the Walking with Lemurs tour 🎟

📸: David Haring (bush baby Kito), Sara Nicholson (ring-tailed lemur Lulu) ... See MoreSee Less

Duke Lemur Center

1 week ago

Blue-eyed black lemur Brady is a fiend for persimmons 😋🍊

This handsome four-year-old male enjoyed these fresh fruits so much that he had to hold one in each hand! Brady is a perfect example of how blue-eyed black lemurs earned their species name, with his jet-black fur and the bluest eyes at the DLC. Brady, named after blue-eyed quarterback Tom Brady, lives with breeding partner Malala and can often be found cuddled up with her on a shelf in their enclosure 💙

📸: David Haring ... See MoreSee Less