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21 hours ago

Breakfast ASMR with five-month-old Junius... This little lemur loves his beans! 🫘

Coquerel's sifaka Junius has been a bean fanatic for most of his life. Whether they're green beans, kidney beans, or garbanzo beans, Junius is ready to chow down! At his most recent weigh-in, Junius weighed 970 grams—over ten times his birth weight, and about the weight of two cans of beans! Adult Coquerel's sifakas typically weigh 3.3 to 4.5 kilograms, so Junius still has plenty of growing to do as he transitions from juvenile to young adult in the coming year 🥰

Baby lemurs like Junius aren’t just cute—they’re a crucial part of the DLC’s conservation breeding program, which has celebrated over 3,400 births since the Lemur Center was founded in 1966. Together, Coquerel’s sifakas at the DLC and other institutions worldwide form a genetic safety net for this critically endangered species. Each new birth helps sustain a healthy and genetically diverse population of Coquerel’s sifakas for the long-term future 💙

🎥: Abby Flyer ... See MoreSee Less

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14 CommentsComment on Facebook

beautiful baby and mom

Absolutely adorable!

Good grief Junius you are so adorable!! Eat well little one and build those leaping legs! 😍

3 days ago

We've got summer on our mind... because May tours are now available for booking! 🤩

➡️ lemur.duke.edu/may2026

Our official tour season begins the second weekend in May with Duke Graduation Weekend and continues through the end of September! We have a wide variety of tour types available, suitable for different ages, group sizes, and levels of interest. Visit our website at the URL above to read a quick summary of each tour, with links to learn more and book tickets. We can't wait to see you all this summer! 😎

Looking for tour dates later in the summer? Tours will go on sale two months in advance on the first Tuesday of each month! ☀️

🎥: Abby Flyer ... See MoreSee Less

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6 CommentsComment on Facebook

🤗🤗🤗

Beautiful! Just what we needed!

Ohhh fun 😊❤️

4 days ago

Our favorite little genius, Radama the Great, shows off his voluntary weighing skills 😁

Radama the Great is an 11-month-old Coquerel's sifaka and the great-grandson of Jovian aka Zoboomafoo. Radama is always ready and eager to participate in positive reinforcement training with his keepers! He has mastered all of his "kindergarten behaviors"—the basics of training, like moving to a designated spot when a keeper points (“point-follows”) or sitting still in one spot while waiting for a reward (“stationing”)—and has already progressed past more complicated behaviors, like voluntarily jumping up onto a scale to weigh himself and hopping into a kennel for easy transport to our veterinary building 🥳

Positive reinforcement training allows lemurs like Radama to become active participants in their own wellbeing, minimizing physical contact with keepers and reducing stress. Our husbandry team sets aside an hour each day to train with the lemurs, and each lemur progresses at their own pace through individualized training plans. Of course, every correct behavior earns the lemurs a tasty treat—for Radama, that's peanuts! 🥜

📸: Keeper Sarah K. ... See MoreSee Less

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13 CommentsComment on Facebook

I don’t even practice voluntary weighing skills. No one offers ME a reward. Good going, Radama. 😎

Samuel Alan Rose Irrik Heather so polite!

Wow Radama, spectacular name, same as our king's names. This give a life of the story.

New infant milestone unlocked: eating leaves with mama 🌿

At almost seven weeks old, Gisela's female infant has started joining in on family dinner! Coquerel's sifakas are folivorous (leaf-eating) primates, and all of the DLC's resident sifakas dine daily on leaves. Near the end of the summer, our husbadry staff collect massive amounts of winged sumac—a sifaka delicacy of choice—to freeze and thaw throughout the winter, ensuring that these leaf-loving lemurs have browse even during stick season 🪾

➡️ lemur.duke.edu/ultimate

Want to make a huge impact toward the care and conservation of this critically endangered species? You can take your dedication to a new level by symbolically adopting and NAMING Gisela's female infant with a tax-deductible donation of $20,000! Our Baby's First Year: Ultimate Adoption Package includes a visit to see this adorable little lemur in person, an adoption certificate and framed photo of your sponsored infant, and quarterly updates through the first year of her life. Visit our website to learn more or email us at adoptalemur@duke.edu 💙

🎥: Abby Flyer ... See MoreSee Less

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13 CommentsComment on Facebook

OMG!! So 🥰 adorable

Kind of like that “first solid food” milestone:)✅

So gorgeous !

There's no better activity on a rainy day than cuddling up with your family 🥰

Four-year-old mongoose lemur Clancy is the youngest offspring of 19-year-old Maddie and 17-year-old Duggan. While both parents have had many sons and daughters with previous breeding partners, Clancy is their first and only offspring together. When the family isn't hopping through the bamboo in their forest enclosure on sunny summer afternoons, they enjoy close physical contact and mutual grooming in their warm indoor housing. Clancy is easily identifiable (especially in the last photo) by his prominent canines aka his little vampire teeth 😁

📸: David Haring ... See MoreSee Less

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8 CommentsComment on Facebook

So cute! 🥰

So cute

Lemur cuddle party 🥳

Join our DLC Museum of Natural History staff this Saturday afternoon for our FREE monthly open house! 🤩

Explore the DLCMNH's expansive fossil collection and exhibit showcasing the evolutionary journey of lemurs and humans! Our fossil collection is located on Broad Street (NOT the main DLC campus) and includes 35,000+ specimens, ranging from 500-year-old lemur subfossils to 55 million-year-old fossils of early lemur-like primate relatives 🦴💀

Want to learn more? Visit lemur.duke.edu/fossil✨ ... See MoreSee Less

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1 CommentComment on Facebook

Great work on the fossil collection! 💀

Fat-tailed dwarf lemur Merganser chows down on a juicy blackberry 😋

Many of the Duke Lemur Center's resident fat-tailed dwarf lemurs have begun to emerge from their hibernation! With all of that stored tail fat depleted after months of torpor, these small primates have rejoined the waking world with skinny tails and hungry stomachs. In Madagascar, dwarf lemurs hibernate not to avoid cold temperatures, but instead to avoid the dry season's annual shortage of fruits and flowers. They curl up in a small hole underground or in a tree throughout the months of food scarcity and re-enter the ecosystem once there's plenty of food to go around. This genius evolutionary adaptation leads these little lemurs to live longer and healthier lives than many other small primates! 😱

🎥: Keeper Sarah M. ... See MoreSee Less

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14 CommentsComment on Facebook

adorable

I bet that is absolutely delicious after not eating for a while!

2 weeks ago

Aye-aye Ardrey enjoys breakfast in bed 🥚

The Duke Lemur Center's nine resident aye-ayes receive soft boiled eggs thrice a week as part of their diet. They use their incredible incisors to chew a small hole in the eggshell, allowing them to scoop out the delicious yolk with their flexible tapping fingers 😋

Like all nocturnal primates at the DLC, the aye-ayes live on a reversed light cycle—the lights in their enclosures turn off during the day, simulating nighttime, and on during the night, simulating daytime. This ensures that the nocturnal animals are awake when our staff are onsite—and no one has to come in at 1am to feed breakfast! Sometimes aye-ayes like Ardrey wake up before their lights turn off, but they usually stay snuggled in their nests until the cover of darkness descends 🌙

📸: Keeper Sarah K. ... See MoreSee Less

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7 CommentsComment on Facebook

A wonderful way to start the day! Ardey you are a cutie! ❤️❤️

Ardrey: oh, eggs in bed? I’ll just take that. (Yoink).

2 weeks ago

Coquerel's sifaka Gisela shows off her newest daughter—the granddaughter of Jovian aka Zoboomafoo 🤩

➡️ lemur.duke.edu/adopt

Fun fact: you can symbolically adopt Gisela through our Adopt a Lemur program! Gisela's adopters got the insider intel on her new infant in their February adopt update before the general public—and you can join the club by purchasing a full or virtual Coquerel's sifaka adopt package and signing up for quarterly updates on Gisela and her family 👀

➡️ lemur.duke.edu/ultimate

Want to make a huge impact toward the care and conservation of this critically endangered species? You can take your involvement to a new level by symbolically adopting and NAMING Gisela's female infant with a tax-deductible donation of $20,000! Our Baby's First Year: Ultimate Adoption Package includes a visit to see this adorable little lemur in person, an adoption certificate and framed photo of your sponsored infant, and quarterly updates throughout the first year of her life. Visit our website to learn more or email us at adoptalemur@duke.edu. We're excited to hear from you! 💙

🎥: Keeper Megan C. ... See MoreSee Less

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13 CommentsComment on Facebook

Soooo CUTE!

Come along and see what's new Were doing the things that animals do Me, and you, and Zoboomafoo 🫶

Congratulations ❤️❤️❤️