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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
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
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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✨
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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.
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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.
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A wonderful way to start the day! Ardey you are a cutie! ❤️❤️
Ardrey: oh, eggs in bed? I’ll just take that. (Yoink).
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.
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Soooo CUTE!
Come along and see what's new Were doing the things that animals do Me, and you, and Zoboomafoo 🫶
Congratulations ❤️❤️❤️
We're so excited to announce the newest member of our colony: Coquerel's sifaka Gisela's female infant 💕
➡️ lemur.duke.edu/adopt/ultimate/gisela-infant
Born on January 12, 2026, this female infant is the seventh offspring of Coquerel’s sifaka Gisela and her late mate, Rupert. She joins this tight-knit family group with older brothers Silas and Arcadius, the former of whom shares her birthday. This infant is a member of an illustrious family: She is the granddaughter of Jovian, the lemur who played the famous Zoboomafoo! 🥳
Silas and Arcadius have both been very excited to interact with the newest member of their family, carefully taking the infant from mom (when Gisela allows it) to groom her. This is one-year-old Arcadius’s first experience with an infant, and he’s done a great job taking cues from Gisela and Silas on how to appropriately hold and care for his baby sister. Gisela is a very experienced mom and has done a fantastic job caring for her new daughter 🥰
Looking to make a tax-deductible donation of $20,000 to symbolically adopt and name Gisela's female infant? Visit our website to learn more at lemur.duke.edu/ultimate or email us at adoptalemur@duke.edu. We're excited to hear from you! 💙
📸: David Haring
37 CommentsComment on Facebook
Precious
Ohhhhh, she is gorgeous💖🥰 (Deb, check her out!)
Hooray to keep the Legacy going ti years to come!
Welcome to the DLC, Bentley! 🧡
Earlier this month, seven-year-old collared lemur Bentley moved from Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute down to sunny North Carolina! After clearing a routine quarantine, Bentley has made himself at home in his new enclosure, eagerly scent marking on branches and confidently exploring his new surroundings 🏠
Like most other lemurs, collared lemurs are endangered; unlike most other lemurs, collared lemurs are co-dominant rather than female dominant, lacking the clear hierarchy in social groups that is characteristic of ~95% of lemur species 🌎
A female companion for Bentley will be arriving at the DLC this spring! In the meantime, this sweet male will get plenty of extra enrichment and may be introduced into a mixed species companion group. You might spot our newest resident on Wild Workshops or Behind the Scenes tours 🤩
📸: David Haring
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He's a handsome guy who's gonna make a great partner for a lucky gal!
Love this! I can’t wait for him to meet his female companion!!
When you're in a "cutest facial expressions" contest and your opponent is four-month-old Junius 😆
Coquerel's sifaka Junius is more excited than any kid in the world to eat broccolini! He loves hopping off of mom Francesca's back to sit next to her in their food basket while they share a veggie-filled breakfast. Junius inherits his goofy expressions from dad Remus—scroll to the last photo for a comparison!—and has even started flipping his head to look at the world upside down, just like dad 🙃🥦
📸: David Haring
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A post-Valentine's post to keep the lemur love going all weekend 🥰
Look at some of the adorable enrichment put together yesterday by our husbandry team! Tag someone in the comments to let them know that you love them not just on Valentine's Day, but 365 days of the year 💖
📸: Keepers Lauren K. (1,4,5); Lizzie L. (2); and Sarah M. (3)
12 CommentsComment on Facebook
What. Makes. Them. So. Funny?
Do. You. Know. That. Lemurs. Always. Look. Like. They. Seen. Someone naked?!?
Great picture ❤️
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Literally eating a bowl of salad 🥗.
She is doing a great job!
She's a hungry little one!! ❤️
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