Welcome to the 2021 Lemur Games! From July 24 – August 8, we will be challenging our lemurs with enrichment designed to test their balance, agility, and cognitive skill. Who will take home the gold medal? That’s up to you! Throughout this friendly competition, we will be giving our audience a chance to vote for their favorite lemurs on our Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter pages.
Value of Enrichment
Lemurs are intelligent, and because they’re intelligent, they can get bored. 365 days of the year, the DLC’s dedicated Primate Technicians help ensure that our lemurs’ lives are interesting with enrichment! Enrichment Technician Kate Byrnes works closely with Curator of Behavioral Management Meg Dye to provide novel sources of enrichment for the DLC’s lemurs every day. For the Lemur Games, Kate will be providing each group of lemurs with the same style of enrichment so we can see how different lemurs approach the same challenge!
Daily enrichment is an essential part of animal welfare to promote curiosity, exploration, and mental stimulation. Behavioral-based enrichment is essential to promoting species-specific behaviors, encouraging lemurs to act and behave as they would in the wild. We are so excited to get to watch each of the lemur species show off their balance, agility, and cognitive skills while encouraging healthy foraging behaviors.
Training, too, is an excellent form of enrichment. All Primate Technicians complete a course with Meg Dye, learning how to use positive reinforcement to train the lemurs to sit on a scale, enter a kennel, move to a certain spot, or other behaviors that may seem like play to the lemurs but serve a purpose if needed.
Meet the Teams
This year’s Lemur Games features three teams: sifakas, varecia, and eulemurs!
Meet Team Sifaka
DLC species in the group: Coquerel’s sifakas
Favorite training snack: unsalted peanuts
Special skills: bipedal locomotion, vertical clinging, and leaping
Favorite Olympic event: long jump, hurdles
Team Captain: 25-year-old Gordian, Felix’s great great great grandfather
Meet Team Varecia
DLC species in the group: red ruffed lemurs, black and white ruffed lemurs
Favorite training snack: craisins
Special skills: canopy balance, LOUD alarm call
Favorite Olympic event: balance beam, boxing
Team Captain: 33-year-old Borealis, the oldest free-ranging lemur at the DLC
Meet Team Eulemur
DLC species in the group: crowned lemurs, collared lemurs, blue-eyed black lemurs, mongoose lemurs, red-fronted lemurs
Favorite training snack: craisins
Special skills: rock climbing, ecosystem adaptability
Favorite Olympic event: sport climbing, decathlon
Team Captain: 27-year-old Kidman, one of the DLC’s most well-traveled lemurs
Events
Catch each of the events on our social media channels from July 24th – August 8th. After each event, vote for your favorite team in the comments! We will also be posting them here in case you miss any of the fun!
Learn More
Want to learn even more about lemurs? Check out our FREE virtual tour! Each video ranges from three to 11 minutes long, highlighting each species along the tour path and discussing all the topics that you would see on a general tour onsite at the DLC. As an added bonus, the videos feature behind-the-scenes footage of the lemurs, giving you an even better close-up look at these amazing animals!
If you would like to support our work here in Durham, NC and across the world in Madagascar, there are so many ways you can help!
