Red-bellied Lemur

One of the rarest members of its family

From Red-bellied lemurs’ name, you’d think they all have red bellies, right? Wrong! Only males of the species have red bellies, and females have white ones – so they’re very easy to tell apart.
Red-bellied lemurs have a very cute family dynamic. A male, a female, and all of their children live together and are very close. They eat, sleep, and travel together.

The Red-bellied lemur is the rarest species of its genus “Eulmur”, and there aren’t that many in zoos and wildlife parks. This means it’s all the more important to keep them safe.

Like Greater bamboo lemurs, Red-bellied lemurs are threatened by habitat loss because of human activity. We have worked on a project with the organisation, Helpsimus to help protect them and work with community education and initiatives to encourage local people to look after them.

Working with Red-bellied Lemurs

Helping lemurs with Helpsimus
We worked with the French charity Helpsimus, funding a project to protect Greater bamboo lemurs and Red-bellied lemurs in the Madagascan rainforest. This project had two aims: to study the lemurs in order to understand how to best support them and protect their habitat, and to educate the communities living nearby, so that local populations could contribute to their care and conservation.

Threats

Habitat loss

Red-bellied lemurs are loosing their rainforest habitat to slash-and-burn agriculture, logging and mining.
Hunting

Red-bellied lemurs are hunted heavily in some areas.

Facts

Red-bellied lemurs are what is known as a ‘cathemeral’ species, as they’re awake during the night and the day.
They are very fluffy and have teeth on their bottom jaw that are shaped like a comb, to help them groom their long fur.
Red-bellied lemurs can eat a kind of toxic millipede which they neutralise by spitting on them!