About gentle lemurs

Hi everybody!

In my last blog I told you more about 5 of our 6 lemur species at Durrell, so now it is finally time to introduce the Alaotran gentle lemurs to you!

Alaotran gentle lemurs belong to the taxonomic genus Hapalemur, within the family Lemuridae. There are five different species and three subspecies of hapalemur. Most of them mainly eat bamboo in the wild, hence their common name ‘bamboo lemurs’. Our Alaotran ones however don’t live in bamboo forests and don’t eat this in the wild, so that’s why I’ll refer to them as gentle lemurs. Gentle lemurs are small, round-shaped brown lemurs with a short muzzle and furry ears. They live only around the papyrus and reed beds of Lake Alaotra, the largest lake in Madagascar. Living in reed beds basically means that they never go on the ground, because they live above water! They have no problems with this, their enormously strong hands and feet are perfectly adapted to cling on to the vegetation they live in.

A wild gentle lemur in the reed beds around Lac Alaotra
(photo L. Woolaver )

Gentle lemurs live in family groups of up to 12 members and travel around to find the best food items, such as fresh shoots. Each group lives in a territory and when they meet another family they’ll do anything to chase them off. In the wild, young gentle lemurs are born between September and February. They are being carried on the back and after a couple of weeks the mum starts ‘parking’ them. She’ll place the youngster in dense vegetation, goes out to feed and then picks it up later. 

Unfortunately, the threats to this amazing species are incredibly big. Madagascar's human population keeps growing and of course, everybody needs to eat. In a country that has very infertile soil, a place like Lake Alaotra where rice can grow, is a bit like a nice cake; everybody wants a slice. However, if the reed beds around the lake are being burnt down at the current unsustainable rate, erosion will cause the lake to get more and more shallow and the whole habitat will disappear. This would mean no home for the lemurs and the birds that inhabit the lake and its surroundings.

Durrell has been working in Madagascar for over 30 years. This means that, even though we are a small organisation, we can make an impact because people trust and respect the organisation. 

In my job, I look after 8 of these amazing gentle lemurs and dream of the day that they will no long be endangered. By telling people about the problems in Madagascar and the threats the lemurs face, I hope that I'll inspire at least one person to do something good for the planet, because everybody can be a conservationist!

Hi again, here are my answers to the latest questions!
I've put them all together, so if you asked me a question, please scroll down.

@Benito: Thank you so much for your nice comment and your questions! I really liked coming to your school and doing the talk, although I wished I had such a cool presentation like Dan ;-)



How many babies are in each birth and how long is pregnancy?

In general gentle lemurs give birth to 1-2 offspring after a pregnancy of about 154 days.


What is the longest recorded tail of a lemur?

That’s an interesting question and I must admit that I don’t really know the answer! The bigger lemur species like ruffed lemurs are most likely to have the longest tails. ‘The bigger the lemur, the longer the tail’ isn’t always the case though. Remember the Indri, the biggest lemur? They actually have really short tails.

What is your second favourite lemur?

Oooh difficult! I like them all actually! If I really had to make a choice, I'd say aye ayes. Just because it's so difficult to see them in the wild. I asked people in Madagascar and even forest guides who are out there every day only see them once or twice in their lives!
I also find it really special that I am working with the aye ayes that were brought to Jersey by Gerald Durrell. He really is my hero and to think that he and I both looked those same animals in the eye is very special to me.

What noise do they make?

Gentle lemurs are not very loud animals, but they do have quite a few noises, or vocalizations. The most common one is the 'popping' noise, they make this when they see keepers or other people they know (the vets!). Some of our gentles are very quiet other than that, but Bandro, the old female, always makes a really funny noise when I walk past, it sounds a little bit like a crying baby!: 'Weeeeh!'.  

After 10 years what is your prediction for gentle lemur numbers?

This is a difficult question, because the threats these animals are facing are enormous. Durrell has been working in Madagascar for over 25 years and has made a big difference in Lake Alaotra by protecting a large area, but we are only a small organisation with limited resources. I think it is important to keep preventing the gentle lemurs from becoming extinct, but the pressures are still increasing. I think their future  is perilous and I think the number of gentle lemurs will continue to go down due to all the threats, but we will continue fighting for them.

Do Ring tail lemurs and gentle lemurs fight?

In the wild, ring-tailed and Alaotran gentle lemurs do not live in the same area, so they will never meet. Some zoos do keep gentle lemurs with other species and this goes really well in general. With all animals that live together in zoos, it’s important to slowly introduce them to each other. When you do this carefully, there should be no fighting. We do this by first giving them visual access to each other for a while, for example through fine mesh. This way they get used to each others presence. When everything is calm, we then given them tactile access, whereby they can touch each other, but not actually go in the same room. When this goes well we remove the mesh between the rooms watch the animals until we are certain that they have accepted each other. We might actually try mixing gentle and ring-tailed lemurs at some point!

How many people do you work with?

Durrell’s mammal team has 14 keepers. Some of us mainly work with one or two species, like the gorilla keeper, and others (like me) work with many more species, like all the tamarins, the lemurs and the fruit bats. I also work with the macaques, mongoose, bears, coatis and howler monkeys, so every day is different!

How many hours a day do you spend with the Gentle Lemurs?

The gentle lemurs are on our ‘tamarins, bats and lemurs’ section. We usually work with about 4 keepers and 2 students on this section. The section is divided into different  mini-sections, so you do something different every day. Four of our gentle lemurs are in the ‘Kirindy’ area and the other four are in the ‘Lemur lake’ area. This morning for example, I did the 'Lemur lake' area, which has the free ranging tamarins, the fruit bats, 7 ring-tailed lemurs, 2 black and white ruffed lemurs, two red-ruffed lemurs and 4 gentle lemurs, quite a busy morning!

We go round in the mornings to check all the animals, to feed them and to clean the enclosures. Then at lunch, one keeper goes round all the lemurs and feeds them. For gentle lemurs we need to collect forage every day. In spring and summer this is ease, because there’s enough fresh willow and bamboo. In winter it’s a bit harder, because the willow trees have no leaves and the bamboo gets all old. Then at the end of the day, we all go to the different areas again, to give the animals their dinner and do a last round of cleaning if necessary. In between all this keepers do a lot of different jobs, from DIY projects to analysing animal diets!

Do the gentle lemurs have specific diets?

Yes, they do. Very specific diets even! All animals do actually, so that's why I always get really sad when I see people feeding animals in zoos. We know exactly what they need and they definitely get enough. If they eat human food, they could get really ill or worse.

I’m going to write about what we feed the gentle lemurs in my next blog, so please keep reading!

How many times did you go to Madagascar?
I went to Madagascar for the first time in November last year. I’ve seen 16 species of lemur in the wild and it was amazing to see them, so I’d definitely like to go back!  

How many lemurs have I worked with?
Well, during my studies I volunteered and did internships at a lot of different places, but never with lemurs! So this is the first 'lemur' job and so I have only worked with the six we have at Durrell.

A little bit about lemurs

Hi again!

My guess is, if I say ‘lemur’, the first image that comes into your head is a picture of a ring-tailed lemur.. am I right? Ring-tailed lemurs (Lemur catta) are probably the most famous lemurs, because of their characteristic black and white ringed tails that they wave along as an expensive fashion item. However, there are many more species of lemur than just King Julian and friends.

All lemurs come from Madagascar, the fourth biggest island in the world, just off the east coast of Africa. The exact number of species changes sometimes. This is because species can go extinct, new species are being discovered in the wild, or scientists find out that genetic differences between subspecies are so big that they decide that they are two separate species. At the moment, the number of lemur species is just over 100!

The differences between all these can be huge. The smallest species of lemur is the Madame Berthe’s mouse lemur (Microcebus berthae), which weighs only about 30 grams. The biggest species of lemur is the Indri (Indri indri), weighing a maximum of 9.5 kilos! Differences between lemur species are not only in their colours and sizes, but also in the habitats they live in. Ring-tailed lemurs for example live in the south of Madagascar, where it can be extremely hot and dry. Aye ayes on the other hand, cannot be found in that dry habitat, they prefer habitats like rainforest, with high humidity and a lot of trees. Some species live in large family groups; others prefer to spend most of the time on their own. Some are diurnal (awake during the day), some are nocturnal (awake during the night) and others are cathemeral (meaning that some parts of the day they sleep and some parts of the night they are awake).

Photos I took when I was in Madagascar last year. Left a mouse lemur and right an Indri and her young

So now I’ve told you a little bit about lemurs in general, it’s time to move on to the lemurs you can see here in Jersey. 

Before I started working at Durrell, I went to the park as a visitor. What I loved most was that the lemurs were not kept in cages, but had actual trees and plants in their enclosures. Especially in spring and summer, you can see them high up in the trees, eating buds, shoots and flowers, just like in the wild. And even now, two years later, I love seeing them running through the trees!

This photo is one that I took on a sunny winter morning, can you spot the black and white ruffed lemurs?

At Durrell, the lemurs you are most likely to see high up in the trees are our ruffed lemurs. Black and white ruffed lemurs (Varecia variegata) Tionie and Gutless and red ruffed lemurs (Varecia rubra) Celestine and Andreas live around the lemur lake. Several times a day you can hear their territorial call, it’s so loud it hurts my ears when I stand too close! The black and white ruffed lemurs share their enclosure with five male ring-tailed lemurs, among which the famous short-tailed Stumpy and Derek. Three other male ring-tailed lemurs live in the Kirindy forest area, together with our two red-fronted brown lemurs Matz and Millie (Eulemur rufus).

This is Andreas, our male red ruffed lemur. When you hear the ruffed lemurs call, try to listen for differences between the two. Andreas is the one that makes the high pitched sounds and his female partner Celestine has the really deep voice!

The fifth species at Durrell is quite remarkable; the nocturnal and secretive aye aye. When you’ve grown up on Jersey and visited Durrell since you were little, you probably don’t realise how special they are. There are at this moment only 59 aye ayes in zoos worldwide, I saw my first when I was 27!  Gerald Durrell started the breeding programme* for aye ayes in 1990 and we still coordinate this programme today. In that year, Gerald Durrell, his wife Lee, some of his staff and a television crew from Channel TV went to Madagascar on an expedition to collect animals and start breeding programmes. 

This is a photo of Juliet, one of the aye ayes that came from Madagascar with Gerald Durrell in 1990.
Juliet was the friendliest animal I had the privilege to work with. She was the first aye aye in the world to give birth to a healthy baby in captive circumstances. Unfortunately Juliet died last year of old age, we still miss her every day 

During the expedition they didn’t only collect aye ayes, but also came home with flat-tailed tortoises, giant jumping rats and 10 small, fluffy, ‘honey coloured teddy bears’; Alaotran gentle lemurs. If you want to know more about this expedition, I suggest reading Gerald Durrell’s book ‘The aye aye and I’. It is a very funny book in which he writes all about their adventures during that expedition.

Next blog will be all about gentle lemurs, I promise!

Bala on a sunny day

*A breeding programme is the management of a species in captivity. Collecting animals from the wild is something that is very rare nowadays, so that is why zoos work together. The breeding programme coordinator knows exactly how many animals there are, where they are, and how they are related to each other. Coordinators make so called ‘breeding recommendations’ and tell all zoos that have that particular species if their animals can breed, or if they have to send it to another zoo so it can be paired with a genetically suitable mate. This is to prevent that animals breed with their own family members (called inbreeding, which can cause diseases) or that zoos run out of spaces to keep those animals.

Hey, here are my answers to 8.4's questions!

What do they like to eat?

In the wild they mainly eat 4 different types of grasses and reeds. One of them, Phragmites reed, is very common and I’ve just planted this in one of our enclosure, I’ll tell you more about that later.

At Durrell we feed them pellets in the morning, either bamboo, willow or grass at lunch and some vegetables like cucumber and tomato in the evening. We do this because it’s very difficult to give animals in zoos exactly the same as what they eat in the wild. So we look at all the nutrients and vitamins and find similar things to feed, so all animals get exactly what they need.

What specific colours are they?

Apart from small differences, all gentle lemurs are brown. Some a bit more greyish, others more gold, but in fact they all look pretty much the same. Males tend to be a little bit larger than females, but they don’t differ in colour.

Can you keep them as a pet?

No. Well, unfortunately a lot of people want one as a pet and this is one of the reasons they are critically endangered. They are being stolen from their wild families to sell to people who think that they make good pets. You must keep in mind that, even though they look cute and cuddly, they aren’t really. They live in small family groups, so keeping one on its own in a cage at home would in my eyes be extremely cruel. This applies not only to gentle lemurs, but any primate. If you think you want a monkey as a pet, think again, would it make you happy to keep one on its own in a cage until you have time for it one or two hours a day? I don’t think so.

How many are pregnant?

I hope at least one of them! Remember Bala, the lemur I wrote about? We weigh the lemurs every month to be able to see if there might be any medical problems, or to see if they might be pregnant. Bala always weighs around 1.45kg, but last week she suddenly weighed 1.65! It is a small difference, but it could indicate a pregnancy. Unfortunately though.. the willow trees in her enclosure have started growing leaves, so I actually think she has just been eating all day and gaining weight because of that! Fingers crossed though.. you never know!
Our other 2 females, Bandro and Vitsy, are simply too old to breed. They are both 20 years old now and they can just live the rest of their lives with us in peace and quiet.

Can they jump high and are they strong as they look like monkeys?

Well, if you have a good look at them, you can see that their hind legs are longer than their arms. They use these to leap between the reeds, so yes, they are very strong. They can jump far, but not high. I’ll post some more later about some cool features like their toes. It’s easier to show you with help of a photo why they can’t jump high. What is extremely strong in gentle lemurs though, are their jaws. Because of the tough vegetation they eat, they need to have strong jaws to chew the plant material. This also means that if you get bitten, it really really hurts!

Do they have any special skills?

Yes, they can swim! As far as I know, no other species of lemur can swim, but gentle lemurs have been observed in the water. I’ve never seen one swimming though, even though two of our enclosures have water in them.

How do they play?

When gentle lemurs play, it looks like they are wrestling. They’ll chase each other and then jump on top of the other and play bite and grab each other’s heads, it looks really funny!

How many are there left?

This question is really hard to answer, because nobody really knows at the moment. The last, most thorough counting was done in 2013, where my Durrell colleagues in Madagascar estimated that there are around 2500 gentle lemurs left.

You probably think that counting is pretty straightforward right? Unfortunately it’s not! You must keep in mind that there are several factors that makes it difficult to count animals like gentle lemurs:

-They live in dense reed beds. The only way to come close is to go out in a canoe, but you can then only count the ones you can see or hear close by.

-In the dry season, the water level is so low that the canoes can’t get close enough to the reed beds to see any lemurs at all.

-They are small and brown. That means there could be one hiding right in front of you, but if it doesn’t move or make a noise, you might miss it.

Field conservationists have methods to make good estimates of the population size. This has to do with the number of lemurs they count in a specific area and then, by using a mathematic formula, they can predict the total population size.

Keep reading my blogs, because I’ll write about an exciting new method that Durrell is planning to use to make counting them much easier!

Can you breed them with non gentle lemurs?

Yes, I suppose you can breed them with other species of ‘bamboo lemur’ to which they are closely related, like the golden bamboo lemur or the grey bamboo lemur. However, I see no reason to do this. It’s a little bit like breeding tigers with lions to ‘create’ a new species. This is very bad practice and people who do this usually want to make a lot of money over the back of the animal. Those animals do not have a place in the wild, as people made them, and they fill up spaces in zoos that could be used for animals that could be released back into the wild.
I think it’s better to keep good track of family relations and genetics, so inbreeding can be prevented (see the next blog!)

My first blog!

Hi!

My name is Maddie and I am one of Durrell Wildlife Park’s 14 mammal keepers. In the next couple of weeks I’d like to tell you more about my work in general and especially about my favourite animal, the critically endangered Alaotran gentle lemur.

That's me with Bala, the reason I fell in love with lemurs!
Photo: Tiffany Lang/Durrell

To let you know how my passion for gentle lemurs started, I’ve copied in a section of something I wrote last year, because this is the best way to describe it:

“Funnily enough, during my studies I never had a particular interest in lemurs and even when I first started my job as mammal keeper I must admit that I wasn’t really passionate about them. But that suddenly changed one morning at work when I met one specific little lemur.

A few days earlier a new female Alaotran gentle lemur had arrived at our park to be paired with one of our males. Whoever gave them the name ‘gentle’ must have been drunk is my guess, because even though they look cute and cuddly, they can bite really hard and defend their territories aggressively. The new female was called ‘Bala’ and although my colleagues said that she was quite calm, I was initially a little bit nervous to go into the enclosure with her that morning.

When I arrived in the quarantine area, she was sitting on a branch and made little contact noises ‘pop! pop! pop!’ (Gerald Durrell described that specific vocalisation as ‘the sound of popping champagne corks’ and I think he was right!). I opened the door, entered the room and slowly sat down. Immediately she came down from the branch and approached me. Expecting the worst, I spoke softly to her ‘please don’t bite me!’, but she just seemed to be very curious. After sniffing my shoes, she put both her hands on my lap, looked up to me and said ‘pop!’. And that was it, since that moment I absolutely love lemurs.”

Now you know why I love lemurs! And actually, by writing these blogs I’m on a mission to turn every one of you into a lemur fan as well!

I'll try to post regular updates, but if you have any questions in the meantime, feel free to post them in the comments below.

See you next blog!

With Tionie (left) and Gutless (right), the black and white ruffed lemurs
Photo: Tiffany Lang/Durrell

Aloatran Gentle Lemur