Lemurs and callitrichids are two groups that the UK's always done pretty well for - and in the rest of Europe in recent years lemurs have gone from being specialties of certain collections (Mulhouse, Cologne...) with all the others just having Ring-taileds and/or Ruffeds to a much more diverse show.
My recent Czech tour included 16 species of lemur (or potential lemurs anyway - 2 species no-showed), and zoo staff we spoke to reported a massive increase in species diversity in the country in recent years, which is good to see.
Lemurs are hard to beat as zoo animals - attractive, showy, conservationally-important, educationally interesting. All good.
And this is a fantastic shot of one of my favourite species.
I have noticed that many zoos in the UK love to have large open walkthrough enclosures for ring-tails, ruffed and maybe some brown lemur. Very nice in size but often a bit bare. But then there are also the specialized collections showing a lot more diversity and I would really like to get a closer look at those.
I myself have seen 29 species of lemur in total but there are many more to go.
One of the first UK lemur walkthroughs was at Blackpool - it's a very nice exhibit with multiple species, a wooded area for climbing and a grassy area for sunbathing. Unfortunately, as you say, a lot of its imitators have forgotten the wooded part.
One of the best recent lemur walkthrough is at Yorkshire Wildlife Park, with huge living trees fully accessible to the lemurs. Dudley's is very good too.
Lemurs and callitrichids are two groups that the UK's always done pretty well for - and in the rest of Europe in recent years lemurs have gone from being specialties of certain collections (Mulhouse, Cologne...) with all the others just having Ring-taileds and/or Ruffeds to a much more diverse show.
My recent Czech tour included 16 species of lemur (or potential lemurs anyway - 2 species no-showed), and zoo staff we spoke to reported a massive increase in species diversity in the country in recent years, which is good to see.
Lemurs are hard to beat as zoo animals - attractive, showy, conservationally-important, educationally interesting. All good.
And this is a fantastic shot of one of my favourite species.
I was very excited at seeing the crowned lemurs on my first visit to Cologne in 1980. (In those days Cologne had a great collection of primates; in addition to the lemurs, there were proboscis monkeys, douc langurs, two different species of bearded saki monkey, three different forms of uakari.... Cologne is still the only zoo where I’ve seen white-nosed bearded saki Chriopotes albinasus and black-headed uakari Cacajao melanocephalus.)
Crowned lemurs have evaded me for many years of visiting zoos. They left Cologne right before I went there the first time and this happened twice more in other european zoos. So I finally realised that there was only one thing to do and went to Madagascar where I finally saw them. I think it was a conspiracy...
