Wanna Watch Lemurs? Head to North Carolina Sifaka lemurs are
expert climbers, as this resident of the Duke Lemur Center
demonstrates. CREDIT: Stephanie Pappas for LiveScience If you
want to see lemurs, there are two places in the world you may
want to visit. The first is Madagascar, the island nation where
these unique primates evolved and the only place on Earth
they're found living native. The second, oddly enough, is
western North Carolina. That's fortunate for me, because while
Madagascar is a bit outside my travel budget, North Carolina is
but a domestic flight away. In fact, I grew up only a half-day's
drive from Durham, N.C., home to the Duke University Lemur
Center, a primate research mecca where lemurs roam free on acres
of fenced-in woods. The Lemur Center is dedicated to
conservation (lemurs are the most endangered mammals on the
planet, with 91 percent of species threatened with extinction)
and behavioral research (the adorable little primates are
humans' very distant relatives, and their brains t