this was the article: Lemurs in love at the Oakland Zoo – East Bay Times It says they had the two brothers Anthony and Eugene, and got a female named Dern for Anthony. That was 2014, so I have no idea what they have now of course.
Oakland has Anthony and Dern. Though genetically valuable as a pair it is unlikely they will breed given their ages. Eugene went to St. Paul to breed with Thurman and again age likely means there will be no offspring.
A DLC Facebook post said no other institutions in the USA have had any births since 2001. They probably do have three breeding females because twelve births since 2010 is a high rate. A pair of twins from two females for six consecutive years doesn't seem very likely. If they had three breeding females (or a third began breeding sometime during that period) it would make a lot more sense.
Well, something is not right... The FB post says that Romeo (their last diademed sifaka) died in January 2011. Yet I am pretty sure I visited later that year and he was still alive (and I have two photos of him labeled 2011). Of course I could have messed up my trip dates, but DLC also have an article on their website dated January 2012, which announced his death (The DLC says a sad goodbye to Romeo | Duke Lemur Center). This makes me stand by my earlier assertion that he died in 2012, not 2011...
I think that you are correct. The Facebook post was wrong, but that happens sometimes. According to the article you linked, he passed away January 17, 2012. Some simple math proves he died in 2012 as well. 1993 (year he arrived at DLC) + 19 (his lifespan, which both sources agree on) = 2012. I should have done the math originally but I just went along with the FB post. Regardless, it's sad, that of the three sifaka species DLC once had, only one did well.
1.1 blue eyed black lemurs "DiCaprio" and "Mirren" (a breeding pair both born late March 2015) will soon move the the Mulhouse Zoo in France.
The center just posted a collage of all the lemurs born (so far) in 2016. It totals to 21 lemurs, and while I'm not the best at lemur IDs, most are pretty straightforward, so here we go: 4 Coquerel's sifakas 1 crowned lemur 2 red ruffed lemurs 2 black and white ruffed lemurs 1 red collared lemur 1 mongoose lemur (I'm really unsure about this one, it's the top middle in the picture, link below, anyone who wants to correct me feel free) 4 ring tailed lemurs 3 blue eyed black lemurs 3 gray mouse lemurs Link: https://www.facebook.com/DukeLemurCenter/posts/1153646498015013:0
Four of Duke's Aye-Aye (2.2) have tragically died in the past 24 hours for unknown reasons. An urgent investigation is underway to establish the cause of death and the remaining 9 are being closely monitored A mysterious affliction has killed four endangered aye-ayes at the Duke Lemur Center in the last 24 hours. All four -- two males and two females ranging in age from 7 to 28 years -- were stricken suddenly and died in the emergency care of two of the world’s foremost lemur veterinarians. “We have experienced a tragedy,” said Lemur Center Director Anne Yoder. “The staff is devastated.” “This happened very quickly,” said operations director Greg Dye. A technician entering the enclosure where the stricken aye-ayes were housed noticed lethargic behavior at around 3 p.m. Tuesday and transported two animals to the center’s emergency room within minutes. “The first one died within 20 minutes of being brought to our hospital,” Dye said. Through the night, three more succumbed with similar speed. Video cameras in the aye-aye’s enclosure showed that “until about 2 o’clock yesterday afternoon, their behavior looked normal,” Dye said. A fifth aye-aye housed in the same area is under observation. No other animals at the center have been affected and the center’s nine remaining aye-ayes appear to be unaffected, but the staff is closely monitoring all 250 lemurs every 30 minutes around the clock for signs of distress. Public tours of the center never enter the areas where the stricken animals were housed and will continue as normal. The aye-aye is so emblematic to the Duke Lemur Center that it is featured in the center’s logo. They are cat-sized, gray-black creatures with enormous floppy ears, large round eyes and bushy black tails. They are active at night, hunting insects in tree trunks using teeth like a beaver and an extraordinarily thin and flexible middle finger that extracts their prey. They are also believed to be the most intelligent members of the lemur family, which are distant primate cousins to humans. In all, there are fewer than 50 aye-ayes in captivity in the entire world, said Andrea Katz, the Lemur Center’s animal curator. “We had 13 and now we have nine,” Katz said. “This is the most significant loss we’ve ever had and is a terrible blow to our breeding program. This is a significant percentage of the aye-ayes in the U.S. at this time.” In their native Madagascar, aye-ayes are under severe threat due to habitat loss, hunting for meat, and an old superstition that they are evil and should be killed on sight. Duke’s Lemur Center pioneered the breeding of aye-ayes in captivity, and many animals born in Durham are now housed around the country in zoos and conservation centers. Three of the four that died were born at Duke. “What happened here is important for all of the aye-aye breeding colonies in the world,” Katz said. “I hope we can learn something that will prevent this from ever happening again.” Dye said the investigation of possible causes of the deaths will look at the ambient air in the enclosure, the animals’ food and toys over the last 48 hours and will include a very thorough post-mortem examination. All four animals have been necropsied on site by Lemur Center veterinarians who saw nothing obvious other than some fluid collection around the heart, said staff veterinarian Cathy Williams. Tissue and blood specimens have been collected and frozen and will be sent out for pathology and toxicology exams that could take a week or more. Because the onset of illness and death were so swift, Lemur Center veterinarian Bobby Schopler said it was unlikely that an infectious agent would be to blame. But nothing’s being ruled out at this point. “There is probably a single cause,” he added. “We are doing everything we can to figure this out,” Yoder said. “We have been entrusted with the care and conservation of these delicate and extraordinarily threatened animals.” Yoder said lemurs in captivity at the center typically live two or three times longer than they would in the wild because they are so well cared for. “We won’t change our priorities or commitment to these endangered species,” she said. “This kind of loss is one of the awful consequences of this great responsibility we carry.” --- These are the four aye-aye lemurs that died suddenly and mysteriously at the Duke Lemur Center (DLC) on Oct. 25 and 26. Most members of the aye-aye colony at Duke have names in a horror movie theme, because of their odd appearance and nocturnal habits. Morticia was nearly 28 years old and the mother of seven aye-ayes bred in captivity at the Lemur Center, including Norman Bates, who preceded her in death by 12 hours in this same tragedy. She arrived in December 1991 as one of the original eight wild-caught aye-ayes brought to the Lemur Center from Madagascar to establish a breeding program. All of her offspring survived to adulthood, one of whom bore twins at the Bristol Zoo in the UK. She has one daughter, Ardrey, surviving at the Lemur Center, and sons in Philadelphia and Japan. Norman Bates, age 7.5, was the son of Hitchcock and Morticia. A vigorous aye-aye, he was renowned throughout the center for his feistiness and intelligence. He had not yet been designated a breeding animal. Merlin (left), age 22, was the son of Nosferatu and Endora and was born at the DLC. He spent six years on loan to the San Francisco Zoo and then returned to the DLC to produce three infants, all of which survived to adulthood, including Angelique, another of the four who died Wednesday morning. Merlin was a star in the DLC’s non-invasive research programs because of his focus and cooperation. He provided a thrill to some lucky DLC visitors by carefully extracting mealworms from their fists with his slender middle finger. Angelique, age 11, made worldwide headlines in September 2005 by being the first aye-aye born to parents (Merlin and Ardrey) who themselves had been born in captivity. Although she was compatible with two different males, she was not a designated breeder and had produced no offspring. She was Morticia’s granddaughter Lemur Center Reeling From Sudden Death Of Four Aye-Ayes
Oh no... a terrible tragedy for an endangered species who's captive population is fragile to begin with. Let's hope that they figure out quickly what happened, and that the remaining aye-ayes at Duke are left unscathed. As somewhat of a silver lining (although it isn't much of one), at least two of them had lived long lives and produced offspring who are still with us.
Is it not possible to import some more Aye-Ayes from the wild? Overall there seems to be an influx in imports of various species from Madagascar atm so I'm a little surprised that the only lemur species that seems to be getting new founders are the couple Blue-Eyed Black Lemurs coming in (still great news for that species, though). ~Thylo
This is a blow, not a fatal one thankfully to the breeding programme, with Europe now taking off with births and Tokyo performing strongly, things are still looking good.
@kiang : No founders were lost either, which we can be grateful for. The captive aye-aye population will definitely survive this, which is the good news, but it was indeed a blow. @ThylacineAlive : That's a good question... there are two zoos in Madagascar that keep and breed them, and they include wild founders that were recently caught. It's definitely a possibility, but I'm not sure why lemur imports are so rare. Import restrictions perhaps?
Further investigation has now declared Avocados to be the cause of the four Aye-Aye deaths in late October: A two-month investigation into the sudden deaths of four aye-ayes at the Duke Lemur Center has left just one plausible explanation -- avocados. Lemur Center officials believe that a natural toxin found in avocados the animals ate the previous day set off damage to their heart muscles, resulting in death within 36 hours on Oct. 25 and 26. A fifth animal fell ill, but is now recovering. Avocado leaves, pits, skin and possibly the fruit contain a toxin called persin that the plant produces as a natural antifungal. Persin is not harmful to humans, but it is known to be an issue for domestic cattle, horses and goats, as well as several species of bird. It had not been recognized as a threat to lemurs. Avocados have routinely been fed to captive lemurs around the world for years as a high-fat supplement, and it’s one of the aye-ayes’ favorite foods. Duke’s affected aye-ayes had received various parts of the fruit, possibly including skins and pits, as part of their standard diet the day before they died. Lemur Center Operations Director Greg Dye said avocado is now off the menu for all of the Lemur Center’s 230 rare and endangered animals. The mystery that may never be solved is why these animals suddenly died on this particular day. Duke’s aye-ayes have eaten the fruit about once a week without incident for the last few years, and on Oct. 24 all 13 of the Lemur Center’s aye-ayes had been fed avocados from the same box; five fell ill, eight were fine. The Lemur Center’s exhaustive examination of the deaths has included testing the animals’ air and water for bacteria, pathogens and volatile organic compounds, none of which turned up any evidence of a threat. Tissue samples and stomach contents of the dead animals have been analyzed by several labs. Lemur Center veterinarian Cathy Williams said the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta is still testing tissue samples for exotic pathogens, but the pattern and timing of the deaths doesn’t really fit with an infectious agent. On post-mortem examination, all four animals were found to have fluid around the heart. One also had fluid around the lungs, but the other three had normal lungs. All of them had food in the stomach. An animal toxicology lab at Michigan State University subsequently detected persin in the stomach contents of three of the four dead animals. (The fourth could not be tested.) Persin is known to attack the mitochondria, structures inside a cell that generate energy. According to Duke veterinary pathologist Jeffrey Everitt, who examined tissue samples under a microscope, all four animals had changes in their heart muscles consistent with the kind of cell injury and cell death known to come from persin. Two of the animals that survived the longest after the Oct. 24 feeding also showed signs of an immune response causing inflammation around the heart. The cause of death for all was ruled “acute cardiac toxicity.” Because they suspected heart injury as the deaths were occurring, the Duke veterinarians collected blood serum from the four animals that was later tested for cardiac troponin, a molecule commonly used to assess humans for heart attacks. The surviving aye-aye who was affected, a male named Grendel, had elevated troponin levels, as did the four that died. The eight unaffected animals had no detectable troponin. After resting quietly for a week and slowly regaining his strength, Grendel (age 6-1/2) is now reported to be eating and behaving normally. He was the first aye-aye to fall ill on Oct. 25, perhaps because his feeding schedule was slightly ahead of the others. Because there is little information about the aye-ayes’ sensitivity to different foods, Williams and Lemur Center veterinarian Bobby Schopler went back and reviewed necropsy reports for four previous sudden and unexplained aye-aye deaths from across the country, dating back to 1998. In every case, avocados had been part of the diet, and in one case avocado was present in the stomach contents. These had been isolated, apparently unrelated cases over nearly two decades at facilities that regularly fed avocados to aye-ayes and the pattern had never been established. It was the remarkably similar necropsy findings and the sudden death of four animals in a 13-hour span that had the veterinarians immediately looking for an acute cardiac toxin, Schopler said. Despite the remaining unknowns, avocado toxicity is the only hypothesis that fits well, he said. “It’s compelling, consistent evidence.” “Avocado toxicity is not a problem for humans, and it occurs sort of randomly in animals, so it really hasn’t been studied much,” Williams said. There isn’t a standard test for persin toxicity and nobody knows what a lethal dose would be, she said. Persin concentrations are known to vary between the hundreds of different strains of the fruit, as well. Lemur Center staff have played the incidents of Oct. 24 to 26 back in their heads repeatedly since the tragedy. Video footage from the animals’ enclosure showed the stricken aye-ayes behaving normally just hours before they died. But then the two males left their nest boxes around 3 p.m. on Oct. 25 in apparent distress. Sensing trouble, their keepers whisked them to the veterinary suite, but the animals rapidly progressed to shock and death despite receiving IV fluids, oxygen, intubation and attempts at cardiac resuscitation. Norman Bates, age 7, died at 4 p.m. on the 25th. Merlin, 22, died 20 minutes later. Morticia, 28, a wild-caught aye-aye from Madagascar, mother of seven and a matriarch of sorts for the colony, died just before 1 a.m. on the 26th. Her granddaughter Angelique, 11, Merlin’s daughter and the first aye-aye born to two captive aye-ayes, died just before 5 a.m. Williams and Schopler sent a bulletin to their international colleagues on Nov. 2 and again on Dec. 12 urging them to stop feeding avocados to aye-ayes. “The only good to come from this tragedy is that we now know to be wary of avocados. Hopefully our recommendation can prevent this from ever happening again, either at the DLC or any other collection that houses aye-ayes,” said Lemur Center Director Anne Yoder. Avocados Blamed For Sudden Deaths Of Four Aye-Ayes
