A decade celebrating lemurs

We’re marking Flashback Friday today, but as it’s also Working Naked Day (yes you read that right!) we’re turning back the clock 10 years to when a group of brave zoo keepers bared all in a saucy charity calendar!

The daring team shed their uniforms to feature in the 2009 DZG calendar, which raised hundreds of pounds to help wild lemurs in their native Madagascar.

A decade on and we’re still doing our bit for the extrovert creatures by proudly supporting the work of the Lemur Conservation Association, AEECL.

The project conducts conservation and research projects for Madagascar’s highly endangered lemurs, who are threatened by deforestation and habitat loss due to logging and agriculture as well as being targeted by hunters and poachers.

We’re backing the AEECL’s five-year education programme to fund nine primary school teachers who are educating the Malagasy people to protect their local habitats.

Here at DZG we have five kinds of lemurs including the ring-tailed, the critically endangered black-and-white ruffed, red ruffed, collared and black lemur.

Find out more by visiting Lemur Wood, our one-acre walkthrough exhibit, which has been home to a variety of free-roaming lemurs for the last 14 years – and keep an eye out as we’re planning to refurbish the popular paddock in coming months.