Duke Lemur Center accepting and directing gifts to community rebuilding By Charlie Welch, Conservation Coordinator Massive crop loss, damage in SAVA region On 7 March 2017, a very powerful category 4 tropical cyclone Enawo made landfall in northeastern Madagascar and swept down the entire length of the island country. There was flooding and some wind damage in […]
Lemurs aren’t just cute, they’re crucial Why are lemurs so special? Here’s just ONE reason: Because non-invasive research on grey mouse lemurs has helped shed light on devastating human diseases like Alzheimer’s: https://today.duke.edu/2017/03/jumping-genes-suspected-alzheimers. Like humans, mouse lemurs develop amyloid brain plaques and other Alzheimer’s-like symptoms as they age. Studying these tiny primates has helped lead to a […]
Marina, our SAVA Conservation Project Coordinator and DLC researcher, just came back from the forest and sent us these images to post! Here’s what she writes: “The other night, while doing fieldwork at Tsihomanaomby, a subhumid forest in northern Madagascar, we came across a fat-tailed dwarf lemur, a few meters away from us, carrying a ‘bouquet’ […]
This is the 2nd of a series of posts exploring how the DLC determines which lemurs are bred, what ‘baby watch’ is like for techs and vet staff, and why it’s so important to increase captive populations of these rare and amazing animals. Learn more, submit your own questions, and see our gallery of 2017 infants here. Question 1: How does […]
It’s birth season here at the Duke Lemur Center! Birth season began this January with the arrivals of sifakas Gothicus (1/6) and Furia (1/10), our first babies of the year! Different species breed and give birth at different times, so infants should continue arriving through July and even August, concluding with the last mouse and dwarf lemur births. As […]
January-February, 2017 — During the fall session of the Lemur Learning Homeschool Academy, students wrote about two of their favorite lemur species. They compared and contrasted their physical characteristics, behavior (social systems, breeding, communication), and habitat in the wild. They paid special attention to their status as endangered primates. Here is Katlyn’s essay. Red Ruffed lemurs […]
In the Duke Lemur Center’s “Notes from the Field” series, we follow DLC researcher and SAVA Conservation Project Coordinator Marina Blanco on a field expedition to Madagascar. This is the final entry in our multi-part series. Return to the Office We are back at the DLC-SAVA conservation office in Sambava, the mission to COMATSA just over. We are […]
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Thursday, Dec. 15, 2016 CONTACT: Karl Leif Bates (919) 681-8054 karl.bates@duke.edu DURHAM, NC — A two-month investigation into the sudden deaths of four aye-ayes at the Duke Lemur Center has left just one plausible explanation — avocados. Lemur Center officials believe that a natural toxin found in avocados the animals ate the […]
