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Founded in 1966 on the campus of Duke University in Durham, NC, the Duke Lemur Center is a world leader in the study, care, and protection of lemurs—Earth’s most threatened group of mammals.
With more than 200 animals across 14 species, the DLC houses the world’s most diverse population of lemurs outside their native Madagascar.
To advance science, scholarship, and biological conservation through non-invasive research, community-based conservation, and public outreach and education.
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TOMORROW: dig into primate evolution with the Duke Lemur Center Museum of Natural History's FREE open house! 🔍
✅ Where: 1013 Broad Street (NOT the main DLC campus!)
✅ When: Saturday 7/29 from 1-4pm
✅ What: Take a look at the DLC's expansive fossil collection and our exhibit showcasing the evolutionary journey of lemurs and humans. Uncover the primate origin story and view fossils of extinct giant lemurs that roamed the island of Madagascar in the not-too-distant past!
✅ How much: FREE!!!!!
Want to learn more? Visit lemur.duke.edu/fossil 💀 ... See MoreSee Less
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July 27?
All of our lemurs agree: our keepers are the best! 🤩
This week is Zookeeper Appreciation Week, so we're celebrating our incredible husbandry team! The Duke Lemur Center's team of dedicated keepers allow us to provide world-class care to these endangered primates. Whether it's handing out diets, preparing enrichment, weighing infants, cutting browse, training, or much more, our keepers are passionate about the work we do and are an essential part of DLC operations 💙
➡️ www.amazon.com/gp/registry/wishlist/373AW0NFW38GY/ref=nav_wishlist_lists_1
You can help us thank our amazing keepers this week by donating items from our Amazon wishlist! We have a variety of items that help our husbandry team do their jobs safely and effectively, including gloves, boots, head lamps, and bug spray (an absolute essential during North Carolina summers!) ✨
📸: David Haring (1,4,5); Jodi S. (3); Sara Sorraia (2,6); Grayson P. (7) ... See MoreSee Less
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You guys are the BEST! Thank you for all you do for our lemur friends! They have a safe, comfortable and enriched life thanks to all your care!
Thank you for all you do to keep the lemurs happy & healthy!
Yall are wonderful.
This #waybackwednesday, we're taking it all the way back to the 70s and 80s 📸
Did you know that the Duke Lemur Center was founded in 1966? Thanks to our extensive database and the hard work of volunteers who have been digitizing old photos, we have incredible pictures like these of lemurs from decades past. This set of portraits is in chronological order from 1974 to 1988 and includes a juvenile Nigel, the Coquerel's sifaka who would later go on to sire Jovian aka Zoboomafoo! 😱 ... See MoreSee Less
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Although: Remember Bebop? Bamboo lemur, hand-raised, only it didn't take and he was kind of ... ferocious? (I liked him anyway.)
Nigel was the best ever.
I had no idea the DLC has been hard at work that long!! THANK YOU for all you do🩷
Waking up to views like this? Yes, please! 🤩
➡️ lemur.duke.edu/wwl
These incredible photos of ring-tailed lemur Narcissa and Coquerel's sifakas Gertrude and Ferdinand were taken by a guest on one of our Walking with Lemurs tours on a Friday morning earlier this month. With no barriers between you and the lemurs, the Walking with Lemurs tour is a fantastic experience for amateur and professional photographers alike! Whether our furry residents are sunbathing on the ground six feet away or foraging in the trees high above your head, you're sure to catch extraordinary views of these endangered primates 👁
We have plenty of spots left in our Walking with Lemurs tours this week, as early as 10:30am tomorrow morning! Visit our website to learn more and book tickets now ✨
📸: Gene X ... See MoreSee Less
4 CommentsComment on Facebook
These are amazing shots! My family loved the Walking With Lemurs tour that we attended this past Saturday. We were lucky enough to see this crew in person (in lemur), and I'm thrilled to see these fancy photographs of them. Thanks for all that the DLC staff does to make these tours both informative and magical!
That would be amazing to wake up to their beautiful natural calls. ❤️
You just want to be a lemur with you when you see these pictures 😋😁😏
Relationship goals: find someone who loves you as much as Fritz loves scent marking 💖
22-year-old Fritz demonstrates how male ring-tailed lemurs scent mark with their antebrachial (wrist) scent glands. Male ring-tailed lemurs have a scent gland and a spur on each wrist, and the spurs are used to gouge tree trunks before smearing them with scent. While females only have one scent gland located near their genitals, males have additional brachial (chest) and antebrachial glands. Researchers have found that males produce distinct scents from the different regions of their body! 😤
📸: Sara Nicholson ... See MoreSee Less
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Showing some love this Saturday for crowned lemur Aria 💗
Have you met 11-year-old Aria on our tour path this summer? She lives with breeding partner Mosi and is beloved by staff, volunteers, and guests for her sweet face and sassy attitude. This gorgeous girl gets her good looks from her late mother, Tasherit, pictured in the middle photo with tiny infant Aria 😍
📸: David Haring ... See MoreSee Less
8 CommentsComment on Facebook
Aria, you are gorgeous and you have a beautiful name🩷I love that you’re sassy!😍
Don't tell the others, but Aria is my heart lemur. ❤️
Very beautiful.
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A block of wood is no match for a hungry aye-aye 😋
Keeper Sarah captured this fantastic video of Lucrezia, who turns 23 years old at the end of this month, using the signature aye-aye percussive foraging technique on her worm feeder. As part of our aye-ayes’ diets, we prepare hollow blocks of wood filled with live worms. These mimic the bug-filled branches and logs in which wild aye-ayes forage. With her uniquely evolved tapping finger, Lucrezia taps repeatedly on the wood and listens with her sensitive ears to determine where the delicious worms are hiding. She then chews into the block with her rodent-like incisors, which can break through almost any material, to create a hole through which to scoop out her snack. What a skilled animal! 😱
🎥: Sarah M. ... See MoreSee Less
17 CommentsComment on Facebook
Love the tapping! So cute!!
Love these little guys. After seeing them last year at the center, have a greater appreciation for them! They r so cool!
Oh Sarah M.! You are my new favourite person in the world. This clip is wonderful! Thank you so much for caring enough to film it and then share it with all of us~ 💗
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‼️ATTENTION: Unfortunately, due to thunderstorms forecasted later this afternoon, we are cancelling tonight's General Tour (7/18)‼️
All guests who had purchased tickets will receive an email with detailed options by 2:00 PM ET today. We are not cancelling any other tours this weekend at this time, but we encourage all tour guests to keep a close eye on their emails as we keep a close eye on the forecast. All of our animals are safe and sound, so no need to worry about your favorite furry friends! 🌩
📸: David Haring ... See MoreSee Less
3 CommentsComment on Facebook
Glad you made the call to be on the safe side. We must protect our fluffy friends. 🙂
The look on this lemurs face, do I hear ⛈️. thunder and lightning ⚡.
Stop letting the lemurs type the warnings, guys; it's "forecast"
How do lemurs spend their time free-ranging in the forest all day? Here are some excerpts from some of Halley's family's adventures! 🤗
❤️ There's lots of forest to explore, but sometimes you have to pause to enjoy the scenery! Four-year-old male Orbit looks dashing in his new red radio tracking collar as he surveys his surroundings from a log
🧡 The forest is full of tasty snacks! Lemurs spend a large portion of their day foraging, and our black and white ruffed family will eat a variety of plants, leaves, and fruits that they find throughout their free-ranging enclosure
💛 Leaping lemurs! Ruffed lemurs are canopy dwellers, and four-year-old Sunshine demonstrates their incredible mobility through the treetops via impressive jumps
💚 Sibling bonding! Sunshine and Orbit look up from a vigorous session of mutual grooming. Lemurs groom one another with their tooth combs, and mutual grooming is a form of social bonding
💙 Eight-year-old Bruno enjoys some solo exploration! Ruffed lemurs are one of the only diurnal lemur species who split up and forage separately throughout the forest, rather than traveling together as a troop. Bruno is the father of younger kids Kepler and Spitzer and the stepdad to the older triplets
💜 Lemurs are fantastic climbers! Whether they're venturing all the way up a tree or making their way across fallen branches, lemurs have incredible grip strength and semi-opposable thumbs that help them grasp onto a variety of substrates
🩷 Here's a bonus photo of Kepler snacking on a sweetgum ball!
📸: Sara Nicholson ... See MoreSee Less
5 CommentsComment on Facebook
Beautiful photos! Halley’s family is such an amazing bunch of lemurs ❤️
Thank you sharing these absolutely amazing pics!! And of course, for always teaching us about all the beautiful beings that inhabit the DLC❤️Halley’s family is GORGEOUS!!💜🩷💙🩷💜💙
Thank you for sharing these pictures of Halley’s family ❤️. They are adorable 🥰. I learn something about these beautiful animals every time I read a post from DLC!
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Happy Wednesday! Enjoy some cute candids of our residents, taken by our wonderful husbandry staff 💕
🍃 Ring-tailed lemur Schweppes curls up for an afternoon nap in his forest enclosure (📸: Anna-Lisa K.)
😛 Blue-eyed black lemur Malala shows off her pale blue eyes with a morning blep (📸: Sarah K.)
🌸 Coquerel’s sifaka Silas snacks on fresh redbud flowers (📸: Savannah P.) ... See MoreSee Less
2 CommentsComment on Facebook
They are so beautiful. I love them all. ❤️❤️
Schweppes, Malala, and Sifaka Silas are all cutie pies