utenzi

On Saturday I went on a tour of Duke University's Lemur Center with 14 other people on a Meetup event. There's one of the lemurs over there on the left. Cute fellow, eh? I'd done the tour once before, a number of years ago, as an extracurricular activity during a science conference. It was a lot better that time. Maybe because we were scientists, they really gave us good access that time. On Saturday we just got a brief tour of the tourist version of the nocturnal and diurnal cages. It was interesting, particularly because Keith, the guide, was very knowledgeable and enthusiastic. But it just didn't compare well to the tour I had back a few years. Still, it's always interesting to see other members of our extended biological family. Particularly ones as well suited for their natural environment as lemurs are. The next two pictures were taken in the nocturnal cage. I took around 20 pictures in there but none came out well. It wasn't so much the lack of light, as ...

Here's a few more pictures that I took on Friday at the Duke Lemur Center. Just above is a Black and White Ruffed Lemur. This cutie is a Blue-Eyed Black Lemur--you can see by the eyes where it came by its name. I think this is a species where the males are one color and the female another. If so, the males are black and that's why they're called Black Lemurs. If not, then it's odd that they named them this way. :-) Below you can see the long canines that this type of lemur has. While lemurs are almost entirely vegetarian, they do need long canines to tear into tough skinned fruits that are native to Madagascar. The profile picture reminds me of a meerkat.

Friday afternoon I left work a few hours early and went to the Duke University Lemur Center. This is the sign that greets you to the center. Until recently it was called the Duke Primate Center. The name change is apparently a PR push that Duke is making for a more visitor-friendly approach. The logo seen above on the T-shirt is quite cute and plastered all over the place. Since lemurs are often cute and always fascinating I'm sure that funding will jump now that Duke is pushing for a more public image. The education portion of this program. Lemurs developed from one common ancestor, a small mammal that hit Madagascar around 65 million years ago. Since there was little competition from other species, a common circumstance on islands, this mammal developed into a large variety of species over the years to take advantage of available food sources and habitats. Had Darwin spent time in Madagascar instead of the Galapagos, no doubt his theories of speciation would have used lemurs as t...