After planting thousands of trees and helping thousands of people while overseeing the Lemur Center’s conservation programs in Madagascar for 35 years, Charlie is retiring in 2025. By Robin Smith, Ph.D., Senior Science Writer, Duke University. Published February 2025 in the LEMURS Magazine: The “Where” Issue. When conservation expert Charlie Welch introduces people to Madagascar, […]
Written and Illustrated by Talia Felgenhauer, 2023-24 Undergraduate Fellow in Communications. Originally published in LEMURS Magazine: The “Why” Issue in February 2024. Madagascar is an island like no other. Located hundreds of miles off the southeastern coast of Africa, Madagascar has been isolated for more than 80 million years, changing and evolving independently from the […]
By Andrew Rossi. Originally published in Cowboy State Daily on December 1, 2024. Scientists from the Duke Lemur Center at Duke University come out to Wyoming every summer to find fossils from the earliest ancestors of modern-day lemurs and primates. They say the Bridger Basin is the Madagascar of the Eocene Period. There are plenty […]
There are at least seven species of bamboo in the SAVA (northeastern) region of Madagascar, some native and some introduced. Some lemurs are bamboo-eating specialists! People in Madagascar use bamboo for diverse purposes, even building their houses from it. Some bamboo are so dense, they make excellent substitutes for wood—and because they can grow […]
As 2024 draws to a close, it’s time to reflect on the past year… and that includes selecting this year’s Lemur of the Year! In a poll sent out to Duke Lemur Center staff, we asked for nominations for an annual Lemur of the Year award. Primate technicians, veterinarians, researchers, educators, and administrators were given […]
An Early Start to the 2025 Baby Season 13-year-old Coquerel’s sifaka Gisela has always been a go-getter. Gisela is the daughter of Jovian, the famous sifaka who played Zoboomafoo in the eponymous TV show. She has lived with her breeding partner, 15-year-old Rupert, for just over a decade, and she’s one of the most dominant […]
Written by Nestorine, Ph.D. student at the University of Mahajanga. Originally published in LEMURS Magazine: The “Where” Issue in February 2025. I was born in the Farahalana countryside in the district of Sambava, in the SAVA region of northeastern Madagascar. I am working on my Ph.D. at the Doctoral School of Life Engineering and Modeling (EDGVM) […]
Happy World Lemur Day 2024! If you loved our Which DLC Lemur Are You? quiz from last year’s World Lemur Day, you’ll be happy to know that we’ve made a sequel! All new decisions, all new lemurs—with some returning favorites. Click here or take the quiz below. You can help provide enrichment to our lemurs […]