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Want to take photos like these? Take a stroll through the woods on our Walking with Lemurs tour! 📸
➡️ lemur.duke.edu/wwl
These incredible lemur portraits were taken by a guest in our iconic Natural Habitat Enclosures (NHEs). On a Walking with Lemurs tour, a small group of guests journey out with an experienced guide into two NHEs, where you can view the lemurs in the trees of large, forested habitats from just six feet away, and with no barriers between you (or your camera lens) and the lemurs! 🤩
We are only able to guarantee Walking with Lemurs tours during our tour season (May to September). We are often able to open some off-season Walking with Lemurs tours, but these will only open 1-5 days in advance, as there are several weather, staffing, and animal wellbeing factors that go into the decision to free-range the lemurs in their forested habitats. Keep an eye on our website for announcements about off-season Walking with Lemurs availability, or go ahead and secure your spot for May! 🍃
📸: Arohan Dutt
Happy belated birthday to ring-tailed lemur Sprite, who turned 25 last week! 🥳
Sprite spends her days free-ranging in one of our beautiful forest enclosures with daughter Lulu and grandson Seagrams. As the group's matriarch, Sprite wears a radio collar so that our staff can track her and her family as they navigate their three acre habitat. At the end of a day of foraging for flowers (like redbud, one of Sprite's favorite snacks!) and leaping through the trees, Sprite and her family run indoors at the sound of a dinner bell to settle into their cozy overnight housing 🌸
📸: Sara Nicholson
16 CommentsComment on Facebook
Sprite is 25yo????? Your program is amazing! Your lemurs are living to amazing old ages! Happy Birthday Sprite! 🎂🍇🍌🍉🍎🍓🥝🍑🎂
Happy Birthday Speite.
Happy birthday sweet lady!
Looking for a fun FREE activity this Saturday? Check out the DLC Museum of Natural History's monthly open house! 🦴
✅ Where: 1013 Broad Street (NOT the main DLC campus)
✅ When: Saturday 3/28 from 1-4pm
✅ What: Take a look at the DLC's expansive fossil collection and our exhibit showcasing the evolutionary journey of lemurs and humans!
✅ How much: FREE!
Want to learn more? Visit lemur.duke.edu/fossil ✨
1 CommentComment on Facebook
You might as well call these fluffy primates "black and yellow ruffed lemurs" during pollen season! 🌼
Did you know that ruffed lemurs are the world's largest pollinators? The namesake ruffs around their faces are perfect for catching pollen when these primates stick their faces into flowers to drink nectar. By moving from flower to flower in search of sweet snacks, black and white ruffed lemurs help pollinate the forest, just like bees! Ruffed lemurs Spitzer, Halley, and Bruno show off their yellow snouts after a sunny morning foraging for flora in their forest enclosure. Just looking at them makes you want to sneeze! 🤧
📸: Keeper Sarah K.
11 CommentsComment on Facebook
Poor guys, they’re suffering through this like the rest of us.
💘💘💘
Love this fact of nature 💚
Madagascar has the fourth highest rate of malnutrition in the world, and researchers like Nestorine are working to combat this and establish food security in Malagasy communities 🌱
➡️ lemur.duke.edu/researcher-spotlight-nestorine
To celebrate #WomensHistoryMonth, we're continuing to spotlight researchers working in the field of primatology and conservation. Nestorine is a Malagasy Ph.D. student at the University of Mahajanga whose research concerns food security and nutritional health of children and mothers living in the SAVA region of Madagascar. In combination with the DLC-SAVA Conservation program, Nestorine is fighting malnutrition sustainably through environmental protection, reforestation to avoid drought, diversification of agricultural products, livestock breeding, nutritional education, and job creation to increase household purchasing power. She teaches mothers how to make a nutrient-dense baby porridge from locally available foods like sesame seed butter, corn flour, and moringa flour and helps organize school canteens serving nutritious foods for young children of preschool age 🌽
Read more about Nestorine on our website or in the "Where" Issue of our annual magazine ✨
2 CommentsComment on Facebook
So sad to hear.
Sorry this is happening
Gisela's little girl continues to explore! 💖
➡️ lemur.duke.edu/ultimate
Our littlest Coquerel's sifaka, the granddaughter of Jovian aka Zoboomafoo, is getting more confident by the day! She's almost 10 weeks old and looks like the spitting image of her mama. With encouragement from big brothers Silas and Arcadius, she's hitting growth milestones rapidly and shaping up to be a brave, inquisitive juvenile 🤩
Looking to make a tax-deductible donation of $20,000 to symbolically adopt and name Gisela's female infant? This opportunity will only be available for a few more weeks! Visit our website to learn more at lemur.duke.edu/ultimate or email us at adoptalemur@duke.edu if you're interested in making a huge impact toward the care and conservation of this critically endangered species 💙
📸: David Haring
8 CommentsComment on Facebook
It's the first day of spring, and Rodelinda's family is walking on sunshine! ☀️
Coquerel's sifaka Rodelinda is one of the DLC's most successful matriarchs. She currently lives with mate Johann and their three offspring: Egeria, Albus, and Aurelius. Before she was paired with Johann, Rodelinda had five offspring with her previous breeding partner... that's a total of eight babies from this supermom! All four of Rodelinda's grandparents were born in the wild in Madagascar, which makes her a very valuable member of the genetic safety net for this critically endangered species, and she has grandlemurs across two continents (grandson Radama the Great here at the DLC, granddaughters Sofena and Sydonie at Chester Zoo in the UK). All this to say... Rodelinda rocks! 😎
🎥: Abby Flyer
3 CommentsComment on Facebook
Super sunshine all the way
Beautiful
Love spring 🌱🌼
Fun facts about aye-aye Fady:
👻 Her name means "taboo" or "superstition" in Malagasy ("fah-dee")
🎨 She sometimes like to finger paint, but only if she's paid in honey
🙃 She is trained to voluntarily hang upside down to get an ultrasound
🪹 She doesn't mind living with former breeding partner Grendel, as long as he sleeps in a separate nest
🍼 She's been a super mom but is now enjoying the empty nester life
🏄♀️ She was born at the San Diego Zoo (aka she's a California girl!)
💙 You can keep up with her throughout the year while also supporting lemur care and conservation by symbolically adopting her at lemur.duke.edu/adopt
📸: David Haring
7 CommentsComment on Facebook
A couple more redbud photos to brighten your afternoon 🌸
Redbud flowers are a favorite snack amongst lemurs, and we have plenty of this native plant growing across our 100 acre facility in Duke Forest! Keeper Leah passed out fresh redbud branches to some of our residents yesterday, including blue-eyed black lemur Gellar and mongoose lemur Leonor. It's been a little chillier in North Carolina this week, but that just means our keepers bring the outside snacks indoors! 😋
📸: Keeper Leah
5 CommentsComment on Facebook
The field of hibernation is hot, hot, hot—and Dr. Ana Breit is studying fat-tailed dwarf lemurs to crack the code to tropical hibernation 🤩
➡️ lemur.duke.edu/ana-breit
We're continuing to celebrate #WomensHistoryMonth by highlighting some of our fantastic researchers! When people think of hibernation, they tend to picture animals in dens deep beneath a layer of snow, waiting out the winter. But Dr. Ana Breit studies tropical hibernation, where animals like Madagascar’s tenrecs (small hedgehog-like and shrew-like mammals) and dwarf lemurs enter months-long hibernation periods not because of extreme cold, but because of the dry season and its accompanying reduction in food and water availability. This research has enormous translational potential for human synthetic hibernation, with applications for both long-duration space missions and for biomedical insights into humans here on Earth 🌎
Read more on our blog or in the newest edition of our annual magazine, the "Reasons for Hope" Issue, available in person and online at lemur.duke.edu/magazine ✨
3 CommentsComment on Facebook
Wished I could hibernate sometimes 🥱😴
She's really cutie
Love it. Figure it out Dr.
7 CommentsComment on Facebook
Amazing photos
That"s always good ☺️
Can't wait
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