DURHAM -- Every year around Oct. 15, Duke University staffers go to the forest off Lemur Lane to rattle a bucket of chow and summon primates in from the impending cold.
"And they come a running," said Anne Yoder, director of the Duke Lemur Center.
To prevent deaths or injuries, such as frostbite, during North Carolina's crisp fall and winter, the endangered animals are put in "comfortable caging," Yoder said. The cages are covered with plastic, and hot air is pumped in. "So they are stuck in there the entire six months of the year," unless there is a long break from the cold weather.
But a few days after Christmas, life will change for about 60 of the center's 200 lemurs, as they will move into one-of-a kind $3.2 million winter digs.
The 7,000-square-foot-building, with an additional 10,000 square feet of outdoor enclosures, is designed to house lemurs when temperatures drop below 40 degrees. On warm days, cage doors can be open, and lemurs can roam fenced Duke Forest acreage attached to the building's three wings.
The change will promote the animals' natural social behavior and allow certain species, such as ringtailed lemurs, to build up bigger family groups, said Andrea Katz, the center's curator.
Lauren Dunn Rockart, design architect with the Chapel Hill firm Lord, Aeck & Sargent, said the indoor cages were designed to entertain the intelligent primates, with a lively path of doors that can be opened, closed, or rearranged to customize a space for a lemur family.
Much of the facility is built of recycled material from within 500 miles of the center, Rockart said. The new building is part of the center's master plan, which includes a $5 million research building where 80 lemurs could live full time. It's set to open in January. Duke covered the new building's construction costs.
Duke created the center - the largest sanctuary for the ancient relatives of monkeys, apes and humans - in 1966. For millions of years, lemurs flourished in isolation on their native island of Madagascar, about 250 miles from Africa's southeast coast. Since humans have settled there, nearly a third of the lemur species have become extinct. The Duke center houses about 215 animals on 69 wooded acres in Duke Forest.
