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Duke Lemur Center

1 day ago

Get an up close and personalized look at the world of lemurs with our Behind the Scenes tour! 🤩

➡️ lemur.duke.edu/onsite-tours

The Behind the Scenes tour is a private, customizable experience for groups of 1-4 guests that involves a look "behind the curtain" at everything that goes into caring for the nearly 250 primates in our colony. Your group, along with one of our expert educators, will check out areas off-limits to most guests, including the inside of our animal housing buildings, one of our small nocturnal colony rooms, and a peek at our elusive aye-ayes. You'll spend about half of the tour meeting nocturnal primates and half with diurnal lemurs, with the option to visit one of our free-ranging forest enclosures if weather allows. This is also our most customizable tour—if you have a species you'd like to see, a topic you'd like to learn about, or a list of questions you've been dying to ask, our staff will do their best to accommodate your request and shape the tour to your group's interests 🥰

Behind the Scenes tours through the end of July can now be booked on our website! 🎟

📸: David Haring (1,4); Sarah M. (2); Abby Flyer (3) ... See MoreSee Less

Duke Lemur Center

2 days ago

The Duke Lemur Center's red ruffed lemurs are out of this world! 🪐

Different lemur species living at the Duke Lemur Center have different naming themes, and both red ruffed and black and white ruffed lemurs get space names. Among these are a few lemurs named after astronauts! Here are some of our celestial namesakes:

Mae: named after Mae Jemison, the first Black woman in space. Jemison is an engineer and physician who took flight on NASA's Space Shuttle "Endeavour" in 1992 🌟

Judith: named after Judith Resnik, the first Jewish woman in space. Resnik was an engineer and pilot who was aboard the maiden voyage of NASA's Space Shuttle "Discovery" in 1984 and who was part of NASA Astronaut Group 8, the first group to include women 💫

Buzz: named after Buzz Aldrin, the second man on the moon. Aldrin is an engineer and fighter pilot and was the Lunar Module "Eagle" pilot on the Apollo 11 mission in 1969 🌙

Keep an eye out for these astronomical lemurs this summer! Mae and Judith both live on our summer tour path, while Buzz free-ranges in one of our natural habitat enclosures with his family 💙

📸: David Haring (Mae); Sara Nicholson (Judith); Aditya Baliga (Buzz) ... See MoreSee Less

Duke Lemur Center

3 days ago

Happy Mother's Day to primate moms of all species! 😍

www.amazon.com/gp/registry/wishlist/373AW0NFW38GY/ref=nav_wishlist_lists_1

Because lemurs are female dominant, mothers are usually the dominant individual in the group, responsible for maintaining hierarchy while earning respect from the rest of her troop. Involvement of fathers in parenting varies with each species, but mom's involvement in caring for and raising her offspring is ubiquitous 🥰

You can help the Duke Lemur Center celebrate Mother's Day by sending snacks from our Amazon wishlist for all of the hard-working lemur moms in our colony! Here's a quick rundown of some different moms' favorite snacks:

🥜 Coquerel's sifaka moms like Lupicina (pictured with infant son Majorian) love nuts and nut butters! Majorian is old enough that he's started taking nuts out of Lupicina's mouth—when he gets a little bigger, he won't be able to get away with this anymore!

🪱 Aye-aye moms like Fady (pictured in her nest with son Binx) love waxworms and mealworms! Worms and other insects are a large part of an aye-aye's natural diet in the wild, thanks to their unique percussive foraging adaptations, and wooden worm feeders are a daily staple in aye-aye diets at the Duke Lemur Center

🍊 Ring-tailed lemur moms like Alena (pictured amidst her large, chaotic family) love fruit! We have lots of dried fruit on our wishlist, like dried figs and dates, which are extra tasty snacks for positive reinforcement training and special enrichment

Want to send a gift to the primate mom in YOUR life? Visit our merch shop at shop.duke.edu/specialties/duke-shoppes/lemur ✨

📸: David Haring ... See MoreSee Less

Duke Lemur Center

5 days ago

Did you know that today is #InternationalChameleonDay? 🦎

Today, we're partnering with Wildlife Madagascar to celebrate the 2nd annual International Chameleon Day to honor these unique, extraordinary, and beautiful animals. There are more than 200 species of chameleons on Earth, and more than half of them live in Madagascar! 78 chameleon species are threatened with extinction due to habitat loss, climate change, and live capture. Like lemurs, chameleons come in a range of sizes. The largest chameleon species are around two feet long, while the smallest is about the size of a sunflower seed 😱

Learn more and access a variety of educational resources at wildlifemadagascar.org/news-and-stories/international-chameleon-day ✨

📸: Sara Sorraia ... See MoreSee Less

Duke Lemur Center

6 days ago

Sierra Mist and her family had an exciting first week back in the woods 🤩

Ring-tailed lemurs Sierra Mist, Licinius, and their one-year-old twins Eowyn and Merry are exploring their multi-acre forest enclosure for their first week of summer free-ranging. Sierra Mist and Licinius are experienced pros, while Eowyn and Merry are first-timers in the forest. Eowyn seems eager to cuddle up with mom while Merry enthusiastically leaps from tree to tree. Ring-tailed lemurs are very territorial towards other ring-tails outside of their troop, and Sierra Mist's family lives in an adjacent enclosure to Sprite's troop. Both groups patrol their borders, scent-marking on the fence and staring each other down across the space between fences 👀

Fun fact: at 32 years old, Licinius is currently the Duke Lemur Center's oldest free-ranger 🥰

📸: Abby Flyer (1 - Sierra Mist, 2 - Eowyn, 4 - Merry); Sarah K. (3 - Licinius) ... See MoreSee Less

Duke Lemur Center

1 week ago

Looking to unlock your inner paleontologist? Dive into fossils with our Night at the Museum Wild Workshop! 🔍

➡️ lemur.duke.edu/fossil-tours

Did you know that the DLC Museum of Natural History is home to one of only two fossil prep labs in the entire state of North Carolina? At our Night at the Museum Wild Workshops, you'll learn tips and tricks of the fossil trade with DLCMNH Curator Dr. Matt Borths and Fossil Preparator Karie Whitman. You'll feel like a kid at your favorite summer camp—pouring over drawers of unique fossils from around the world, helping Matt look for microscopic fossils in Peruvian soil, trying your hand at extracting fossils from rock with Karie's specialized tools, and searching for shark teeth to take home to start your very own fossil collection! 😱

We have two upcoming dates scheduled: Wednesday 5/21 and Tuesday 6/3, both from 5:30-7:30pm. Registration is currently open! Learn more and book your tickets now on our website 🎟

📸: Abby Flyer

NOTE: This is an in-person program hosted at the DLCMNH, located at 1013 Broad Street, Durham, NC. Please note that this program focuses on our fossils and will NOT include a visit to the lemurs on the Duke Lemur Center's main campus. ... See MoreSee Less

Duke Lemur Center

1 week ago

Glamor shots of Coquerel's sifaka pair Valeria and Carlo 🥰

Despite being a female-male pairing, Valeria and Carlo are not breeding. Most lemurs at the Duke Lemur Center do not live in breeding pairs, and females like Valeria are administered hormonal birth control during breeding season to prevent pregnancy. When lemurs breed, it is because the pairing has been hand-selected through a Species Survival Plan (SSP) to add genetic diversity to the population of these endangered animals in human care. Carlo has previously sired offspring at another facility with a different female—his oldest son, Johann, also lives at the DLC and is father to Egeria and Albus! 💙

📸: Sarah K. ... See MoreSee Less