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Happy #KeeperAppreciationWeek to our incredible husbandry team! 🥳
It's no small job to care for the approximately 250 lemurs who call the Duke Lemur Center home. Being a keeper requires hard work, passion, and a desire to provide the highest quality of care to the animals, and we are lucky to have fourteen keepers and four lead technicians working under the leadership of our Curatorial Team to ensure that the DLC's resident lemurs remain happy, healthy, and safe, 365 days a year 💙
Keep an eye out for more posts this week celebrating our amazing keepers, and share some love in the comments!!!
📸: Jake Kennedy (1-3) #NationalZookeeperWeek #NZKW2026
Blue-eyed black lemurs Leigh, Lincoln, and McAvoy enjoy a beautiful day in the forest 🌿
Three-year-old McAvoy is the son of nine-year-old Leigh and ten-year-old Lincoln. Blue-eyed black lemurs are sexually dichromatic; while the boys are black with blue eyes, dominant female Leigh sports a lovely orange-brown coat. These stunning lemurs are one of only four primate species with blue eyes (including us!) 💙
Like nearly one third of lemur species, blue-eyed black lemurs are critically endangered. When McAvoy was born in 2023, he was one of only two blue-eyed black lemur infants across North America. Last year, female infant Mitsiky (born to Leigh's niece, Charlie) was the only blue-eyed black lemur infant in human care anywhere in the world. This year, the DLC has celebrated two successful infants of this species: Mitsiky's little sister, Zava, and Leigh's first granddaughter, Lanitra (born to her older son, Brady, and mate Malala). Through collaboration with accredited zoos and conservation facilities around the globe, the DLC is working to protect these incredibly rare primates from extinction 🌍
📸: Sara Nicholson
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Beautiful portraits of aye-ayes Medusa and Melisandre 💕
While most lemurs (and primates in general) have nails, aye-ayes have claws! The only claws that most lemurs possess are their grooming claws, found on the index toe of each back foot. Aye-ayes, however, have claws on all but their big toes of their back feet, and those claws aid in their unique percussive foraging 🤗
Curious about the difference between nails and claws? Nails are broad and flat, and they only cover the tops of fingers, while claws are long and narrow, ending at a point and extending beyond the fingertips. Both nails and claws are made of keratin, a tough protein also found in horns and hair. Our primate ancestors likely evolved nails to improve grip and sensitivity when climbing trees! 🖐️
📸: David Haring
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Francesca + Junius = <3
Coquerel's sifaka Junius has changed a lot over the past year, but one thing that has stayed the same is his bond with mom Francesca. Now nine months old, Junius still enjoys sharing snacks and cuddling up with his mama, despite the fact that he's almost as big as her! We're so proud of first-time mom Francesca for how wonderfully she and mate Remus have raised their firecracker of a son into a healthy, energetic young adult 🥰
Little 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 DLC 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 💙
🎥: Keeper Sarah M.
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Help us keep the lemurs cool this summer by donating water bowls and jugs from our Amazon wishlist! 😅
www.amazon.com/gp/registry/wishlist/373AW0NFW38GY/ref=nav_wishlist_lists_1
With the rising temperatures, making sure all the lemurs have access to water while free-ranging in the forests is a top priority. You can help by donating water bowls and jugs from our wishlist so that our keepers can make sure all of our residents stay happy and hydrated while out in the woods! Lemurs can sometimes knock bowls over when running and hopping through the forest, so we would like to have an excess number of bowls to allow multiple hydration stations per enclosure💧
📸: Allie Monahan (1); Sara Nicholson (2); David Haring (3,4)
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Sound on for one of the most unique songs in the animal world: the call of the indri 🎶
Indris are the largest living lemurs and are found on the east coast of Madagascar. They are members of the same family (Indriidae) as sifakas and also move from tree to tree through vertical clinging and leaping. Like sifakas, they are folivores, meaning their diet consists primarily of leaves and other plant matter. Unfortunately, indris are critically endangered, and they do not thrive in human care, so the only way to see them is by visiting Madagascar—particularly in protected areas like Andasibe-Mantadia National Park 🌿
🎥: Sara Sorraia
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A spoonful of peanut butter helps the medicine go down! 😋
Like many geriatric lemurs, 21-year-old Coquerel's sifaka Bertarido takes daily gabapentin to help with his arthritis. To make his meds extra tasty, his keepers mix them in with his favorite snack—peanut butter! Don't worry, his companion Cornelia also gets a snack (without meds) so that she doesn't get jealous 😉
📸: Keeper Sarah K.
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Not every lemur is an artist on their first try 🎨
Finger painting is a form of voluntary enrichment for the lemurs. While some of our more experienced artists make it look easy, the paint and canvases can be a little scary for newbies! Mongoose lemurs Carolina and Rico were very brave during their session, cautiously approaching the setup and dipping their toes into the paint. Carolina didn't mind getting her toes messy while she snacked on the available grapes, but Rico was less pleased with the sensation of the paint on his feet and got a little spooked. They will have more opportunities to explore in the future—they might decide it's not for them, or we might end up with an undercover Picasso in our midst! 🤗
➡️ shop.duke.edu/Paintings-by-Lemurs
You can purchase lemur art through our online store or in person at our Lemur Landing Gift Shop! Choose a canvas size online and we'll surprise you with the artist, or visit in person to inspect all of the options and hand-select your favorite. All paintings come with a high-quality photo of the artist(s), a gallery-style ID tag, and information about the lemur species—and all sales contribute to the care and conservation of lemurs 💙
🎥: Abby Flyer
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Ring-tailed lemur Eowyn takes good care of her papa, 33-year-old Licinius 🥰
Grooming is not just a way for lemurs to stay clean—it's also a form of social bonding! Dominant females can request grooming from any member of their troop simply by presenting an arm or a leg and waiting to be pampered. You can tell when two lemurs have some sort of relationship (or are in the process of building one) if you see mutual grooming, as the more dominant individual has no obligation to return the favor to a more submissive group member. Infants learn most behaviors through observation, so babies will often start off by grooming the top of mom's head when they observe other family members doing the same 💕
Lemurs have a special grooming tool called a tooth comb! In their bottom jaw, their front four to six teeth (species-dependent) grow forward and out to form a comb-like structure at the front of their jaw. They run this comb through their fur to remove dirt and bugs. They also have a small secondary tongue called a sublingua attached to the base of the tongue (the little white triangle just barely visible in the second photo) that can be used to clean the tooth comb after use 😛
📸: David Haring
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Hot day? No problem! If you're a professional jokester like Pax, you can play AND lounge on your back 😝
Coquerel's sifakas like Pax are native to the dry deciduous forests on Madagascar's west coasts. During the dry season, temperatures stay generally in the 70s, while the forest heats up to the 80s and 90s during the hotter wet season. You might see lemurs perform a number of behaviors to cool down on hot days, including licking their palms (saliva evaporating cools them down) and lying flat on their bellies (ground temperature is often cooler than air temperature). That doesn't stop playful young adults like Pax from goofing off—rather than hopping around in the heat, she makes play faces at her mom and dad from the comfort of a cool shelf in her family's screened-in outdoor patio 💕
On particularly hot days, our husbandry team will also provide lemurs with popsicles and/or frozen water bowls 🧊
📸: David Haring
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