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.