Lemurs getting ready for their new starring role at Tennessee Aquarium [video]

Ring-tailed lemurs form a lemur ball Monday, Feb. 27, 2017 at the Tennessee Aquarium's new Lemur Forest exhibit.
Ring-tailed lemurs form a lemur ball Monday, Feb. 27, 2017 at the Tennessee Aquarium's new Lemur Forest exhibit.

Chelsea Feast may have the best job in Chattanooga right now.

On Monday morning, she was in the newly finished Lemur Forest enclosure atop the Ocean Journey building downtown at the Tennessee Aquarium.

As she pointed to a spot on a fake tree limb, one of the four ring-tailed lemurs on display jumped up on the limb and hustled over to where she was pointing, getting a carrot as a reward.

For weeks now, Feast, who joined the aquarium staff last June as its lemur expert, has been training her long-tailed friends to follow basic commands - come to where she points, get into a kennel, or come back to your overnight quarters - and they all seem to instantly follow her orders.

She has been practicing her spiel for the twice-daily programs she will offer visitors when the Lemur Forest addition officially opens Wednesday.

With their large, round eyes and long, distinctive black-and-white ringed tails, lemurs are instantly recognizable. They move with cat-like grace, the tail providing stability, although a stately stroll about the enclosure can be interrupted by a sudden leap 6 or 7 feet into the air onto a nearby branch.

Over the past seven months, the aquarium has acquired seven ring-tailed lemurs, four from a zoo in Waco, Texas, and another three from a children's zoo in Lincoln, Neb. There are two more red-ruffed lemurs, slightly larger in size and a deep reddish brown in color, from the aquarium in Charleston, S.C.

All of them were born in captivity.

That's caused some problems with their enclosure mate, a large radiated tortoise that is also native to Madagascar, but not something these lemurs have ever seen before.

"They were terrified," Feast said, so the introduction is proceeding slowly. Two more tortoises are set to arrive in two weeks, she said.

In the wild, lemurs are an endangered species. A member of the primate family, along with apes, chimps and humans, they are found only on Madagascar, a large island that would stretch from Maine to northern Florida if it were off the U.S. coast, Feast said.

Feast's passion is to save the lemurs from extinction. In Madagascar, local residents have cut down 90 percent of the trees, causing a severe soil erosion problem that has forced many small farmers to turn to slash-and-burn farming, where they cut down the remaining forests and exacerbate the problem.

"The people of Madagascar suffer from extreme poverty," Feast said. One way some of them make extra money is by selling lemurs to the pet trade.

But lemurs are not easily domesticated, she said. Some people remove their front teeth to make them easier to handle, Feast said, which is a pretty good indication they are wild animals and not suitable for pets.

They are highly intelligent, however, and seem easy to train. Feast and her fellow lemur caretakers at the aquarium have taught them to go into a kennel, opening the door themselves, so they can be taken to a veterinarian if needed. When she calls in the evening, they also will leave the open enclosure and move back to their separate stalls in the private space behind the exhibit area.

For meals, Feast uses "puzzle feeders" from PetSmart, food containers that offer a mental challenge to the lemurs. Each of the bright-colored plastic containers is filled with separate compartments and the lemurs must spin them around to access the treats inside. Normal food is apples, bananas and grapes, Feast said.

The seven lemurs have access to about one-third of the space on top of the Ocean Journey building, much of it taken from its previous inhabitants, a group of macaws. For now, the macaws are making special appearances throughout the aquarium since they are at home perched on their caretaker's shoulder, aquarium spokesman Thom Benson said.

Feast said she hopes exposure to the lemurs will convince aquarium visitors to take an interest in their protection. The aquarium has an agreement to provide $10,000 annually to one of the two zoological research centers on Madagascar, funds the aquarium hopes to get back from increased attendance and donations. Handmade items from Madagascar are now for sale in the aquarium shop, as well.

The aquarium would consider breeding its lemurs, but that depends on getting approval from the staff at the Species Survival Plan, part of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums that advises aquariums and zoos on when it is proper to breed their animals.

Since lemurs are native only to Madagascar, and have been inbred for years, the Tennessee Aquarium's lemurs would be tested first to ensure that their genetic makeup is different from their companions.

"We have the space," Feast said, "but we want to keep the population as [genetically] diverse as possible."

For now, there is no plan to breed lemurs in captivity and re-introduce them into the wilds of Madagascar.

"With all of the threats in the wild, there is nowhere to put them back into," Feast said. "We need to fix those problems before we can re-introduce them."

Contact staff writer Steve Johnson at 423-757-6673, sjohnson@timesfreepress.com, on Twitter @stevejohnsonTFP, and on facebook, www.facebook.com/noogahealth.

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