This page is for field trips or groups with 16 or more individuals. If you’re looking for our public tour, we recommend checking out the General Tour, or if you’re looking for a guided, private tour for a group of 15 or fewer individuals, please check out the Private Tour.
All of our field trips and large group tours introduce you to the Duke Lemur Center, its three-fold mission, and its residents—including approximately 17 of the amazing lemurs that call the DLC home, representing at least eight different species! For field trip groups, we also offer educational themes organized by grade level, and you are also always welcome to let us know if there are any specific themes or terms you’re hoping we can cover, and we will do our best to accommodate your requests. Group tours can range from a quick, light, and engaging 45 minutes for a group of curious kindergarteners, to the maximum 90 minutes for an engaged group of undergraduates, to varying times in between. Your guides will adjust and customize your experience based on various factors including age, interest level, weather, and lemur activity.
Please note that group tours do not go into the forested Natural Habitat Enclosures – all lemurs viewed will be in silos or indoor habitats (see more about the housing at the DLC in our Virtual Tour – video #3 is all about lemur housing). If you are interested in seeing the free-ranging lemurs in their forested habitats, you can click here to learn more about our Walking with Lemurs Premium Tour!
Because lemurs are not adapted to chilly NC weather, we can only offer our full schedule of tours from May – September. Group tours will resume in May 2023. See below for information about how to schedule your group tour.
Reservations Essential
You must have a tour reservation to see the lemurs. In order to keep the endangered primates that call the DLC home safe and healthy, we regret that we cannot accommodate any walk-in visitors in any capacity.
All tour reservations can now be made online! Please continue reading below to learn more about how to schedule your group tour with us.
NOTE: While there is no official age limit on this tour, based on our extensive experience hosting guests of all ages, this tour is best-suited for guests ages 5 and up. All guests are required to wear face masks at all times when inside any animal housing building, which includes the nocturnal animal viewing area. Since this requirement is in place to keep our endangered lemurs safe, we cannot make ANY exceptions to this face mask requirement, even for infants or medical exemptions. The majority of lemur viewing on the tour path is outdoors, so anyone who cannot wear a face mask is welcome to enjoy most of the tour, and just sit out from viewing the three nocturnal species that are viewed indoors. You can also see fantastic views of all of our nocturnal residents in our free Virtual Tour video series by clicking HERE.
Cost
$10 + tax per person, with a minimum fee of $150 + tax per scheduled date and time
We have three payment options for field trips and large groups:
- Credit card payment through a secure online portal to confirm scheduled date and time
- Signed invoice contract to confirm scheduled date and time, payment due by day of tour
- (for Duke University groups) Fund code to confirm scheduled date and time, payment processed after the tour via IRI form
Please note that full payment must be received by the time of check-in for your first scheduled group tour. We cannot accommodate delayed payment.
How to Schedule
Because the Duke Lemur Center is an active, non-invasive research facility, our capacity for tours is limited by available space and staffing. While we will always do our best to accommodate requests, we have a few guidelines to consider below.
- The maximum number of guests we can accommodate at the same date and time is 45 people, including all members of the group that will be walking on the tour path in the group (teachers, chaperones, younger siblings, etc.). If your group is larger than 45 people, we will work with you to schedule multiple dates and times, with at least two hours between each scheduled time.
- We do not have any capacity for groups to stay onsite between tour times. Our public facilities are extremely limited, so we cannot offer accommodations for meals or waiting times.
- We are happy to accommodate guests in our gift shop and public restroom facilities, but space is limited, so larger groups will need to visit indoor facilities in shifts.
- Your scheduled start time is when your guide(s) will be ready to walk onto the tour path with your group. We will do our best to accommodate if you encounter unexpected delays, but if your group is not ready to begin walking the tour path with your guide(s) more than 30 minutes after your scheduled time, your group’s tour experience will be severely impacted.
- While we will work with each group to accommodate scheduling as best we can, we are currently only able to offer field trip and large group tours in the months of May – September on Wednesdays and Thursdays 9:30am – 1:30pm. We understand that this may not fit with every group’s availability, and we regret that we cannot accommodate every request we receive. We appreciate your understanding that we are doing the absolute best we can to accommodate as wide of an audience as possible through our various tour offerings (including our free Virtual Tour, which can be viewed HERE).
If you’re still interested in scheduling a field trip or large group tour with us, please submit the form below. We will reply to every request within 72 hours, so if you do not receive a reply from us within three days, please email primate@duke.edu to ensure we are not having technical difficulties with our form.
Please note that we unfortunately will not be able to accommodate every request, so your group does not have a confirmed tour reservation until we receive payment through one of the approved methods listed above, and you receive our official confirmation email.
