Let’s jump straight in with my blog this week about who is who in our Ringtail Lemur walkthrough. A lot of people ask about how we tell our ringtail lemurs apart. Well for the keepers that work with them on a daily basis, this is very easy. However, for those of you that don’t know, here are some tips and tricks to identify them.
Leah – Our Lemur Troop’s Dominate female
As you may or may not know, Ringtail Lemur troops are led by the females. Leah, our 16-year-old is our boss. She has been for a long time now taking over the troop from Molly around 8 years ago when Molly was in charge for a short time. You can identify Leah by the distinct black V on the bridge of her nose. She is the only lemur in the troop with this marking, making her quite easy to pick out, if you see her front on.
Leah can be a little short tempered and will tell others off with just a look. She is also usually the first to the food, telling the others to back off from her favourite vegetables, carrots.
She is an excellent leader and it shows with how long she has remained in charge.
Molly – Beta female
Molly is our second in command and extremely bossy. She can be very spiteful when it comes to both the keepers and the other lemurs if she’s in a mood. She will chase them all, except for Leah, she doesn’t mess with her.
For identifying Molly, she does have a toe missing from her right back foot. She is also fairly light in colour around her face.
She is 14 years old and has been with us since birth. Molly may be spiteful towards her keepers sometimes, but she absolutely adores baby ringtails. She has even acted as a surrogate mother to one of Leah’s twins when she had her last set of boys. Molly decided upon herself to take one of the babies which Leah was apparently more than happy to let her do. She dotes on the youngsters and will always protect them and look after them when needed.
Lulu- Oldest female
Lulu is our oldest female at 24 years old. She has had many babies whilst in our walk through and was Julian’s mother.
Lulu is our largest female in terms of general body size and weighs in at just over 3kg. Lulu also has the shortest tail out of our females. Unfortunately, it was bitten during a fight, leading to an infection which meant that her tail needed to be docked. This shorter tail and larger size does make her easier to identify from the rest of the troop.
Lulu is also the lowest ranking in our group. Due to her age, she likes to take things easy and doesn’t want to get involved with any drama, so will take herself away from it. But don’t worry. She still gets lots of tasty treats from her keepers. We only feed fruit to our lemurs when they need to have medication, such as wormers or antibiotics.
Their main diet is made up from vegetables, browse (safe plants that they can eat) and specialist primate pellets (find out more about going fruit free for primates in my previous blog here). This makes sure to keep their diet low in sugars helping to keep their teeth and body in good condition. Ringtails can act like aggressive hyped-up toddlers when they have too much sugar, which is something we don’t really want.
Alex – Male
Alex is the only male within our troop. Some people have asked where our males went to. I can inform you that our males, Maurice, Barry, Melman, Bert and Ernie all left with female Minx to head to Battersea Zoo, in London.
Our troop went through a bit of a tough time a few years ago. We ended up having to split off most of our males to form a bachelor group. They were housed at our sister site, Sandwich Wildlife Park. Unfortunately, Minx, Lulu’s daughter and the mother of our last troop member, Flo, was also kicked out of the group.
We fitted Minx with a contraceptive implant so that she wouldn’t come into season around the males and introduced her to the boys. Everything went really well and as far as I am aware they are all living happily together at Battersea.
Alex is 15 years old and can be identified by his rather square looking head. He also has the larger scent glands on the insides of his wrists, which all male lemurs possess. Ringtail lemurs use scent as one of their main forms of communication with each other. They will scent rub around their territory to mark it, a little bit like big cats would.
Alex is very friendly and sweet. One of the reasons that the females took to him so well is because he is very respectful around youngsters and babies. Male ringtails are not involved with the babies really until they are old enough to play with, leaving all their infant’s care to the females.
Flo – Youngest Female
Lastly, we have our fifth member of the troop, Flo. She is youngest ringtail at 3 years old and is Lulu’s granddaughter. Flo is extremely cheeky and likes to cause trouble by instigating some rough play with the others.
Flo is our smallest lemur, coming in at just 2kg. She does carry Lulu’s family trait of the pointy elf type ears, which are extremely cute. Flo loves to run around and jump about between the public walkways. She is often the lemur that will climb on you in the walk-through.
If you come and visit us, we do allow our lemurs to climb on the public. However, we do not allow you to touch them. This gives them the freedom of choice explore different scents and textures. One of their favourite scents is the smell and salty taste of the sea. If you have been to one of our local beaches with your shoes on and come into the walk-through, your feet will be swarmed by the lemurs wanting to get a good sniff at your feet.
Prosimians
Lemurs fall under the category of prosimians, meaning that they are primates, but not monkeys. Lemurs have their own branch within the primate family, making them incredibly unique. They are only found on the Island of Madagascar. There are about 100 different species of lemurs that call this Island off the east coast of Africa home.
They are considered quite a primitive family within the primate species, which is shown in their intelligence and appearance. Don’t let them know, but our ringtails are not the smartest bunch. Keepers must make their enrichment fairly simple, otherwise they just get bored and walk away if it’s too complicated.
Anyway, next time you visit us, why not test your knowledge, and see if you can identify each of our lemurs.
