Duke University Primate Center studies and captive breeds endangered prosimians, as well as housing a collection of over 15,000 primate fossils.

DUPC also hosts the wonderful Adopt-a-Lemur program. I first stumbled across them sometime in early 1996 when I was still a starving college student and didn't have an extra fifty bucks to spare. Now that I've graduated and have a Real_Job(tm), I went back to their web site and was pleased to see the program is still going strong.

Being a sucker for small furry critters, I chose the Galago senegalensis moholi, or Lesser Bushbaby [photo] to adopt. According to their web site, they currently house twelve of this species. Members of this species are also living in the Virginia Zoological Park in Norfolk, Virginia. My hometown (Seattle) zoo doesn't house any bushbabies, though you can find a Ring-tailed lemur (Lemur catta) there.

So, what's a lemur? (Here we begin to borrow heavily from the information provided by DUPC) Lemurs are primates that live in the wild only in Madagascar, an island off the eastern coast of Africa. Though there are many differing species of lemur, they are often tree-dwelling, fruit & berry eating, nocturnal and range in size from one ounce to 15 pounds.

Lemurs, lorises and galagos are primates, like humans, chimps and apes, but belong to the suborder Strepsirhini. Lemurs and Lorises are then in the superfamily Lemuroidea, and my new friend the Lesser Bushbaby hangs out in the superfamily Lorisoidea with the lorises and pottos. Some of the differences that you'll note between lemurs and other simians such as monkeys is that their noses are longer (they rely more on smell) and their tails are not prehensile. (Prehensile: "adapted for seizing and grasping") So, you won't see lemurs hanging from their tails in the trees.

It was once believed that lemurs were already on Madagascar when it separated from Africa, geological evidence is now showing that this took place long before primates even evolved. There was already several hundred kilometers between the two land masses by the time the lemurs moved over, possibly making the journey on floating vegetation. The first human settlers to Madagascar arrived approximately 2000 years ago from around Malaysia/Indonesia, and when Europeans started arriving around the 1600's, lemurs started facing extinction. About 15 of the original 50-ish varieties are now gone. Interestingly enough, the ones that disappeared seem to be the larger varieties.

Can't get enough? I've got a whole page of more lemur stuff.

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