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| Reality show:lemurs'
lives watched by both scientists and visitors |
| photo:Chris Hildreth |
Glander, the outgoing director, agrees
that the center has great educational potential, citing the undergraduate
Program in Primatology, a curriculum he launched and directs to train
students in primatology and independent research. To help forge a
closer link between research and teaching, former scientific director
Elwyn Simons proposes launching a summer field school to immerse students
in research projects on the free-ranging animals in their outdoor
enclosures. The educational impact of the center is also exemplified
by its outreach program for grade-school students, which also helps
the university meet its responsibilities to the Durham community.
“These children are the ones who will have to face the issues
of diminishing biodiversity and extinction of species,” says
Glander. “And the center sought to get them involved and help
them understand why they should be concerned with the lemur in Madagascar,
which is a long way from North Carolina.”
In enhancing both teaching and research, Glander says,
the proposed long-term investment in research facilities and winter
barns is crucial. “There is no way to do research out here any
more than what we are doing.
Studying Creatures from a Lost World
Lemurs are, in essence, living primate fossils,
their existence in modern times no less important than if herds
of dinosaurs were discovered still walking the earth. Current-day
lemurs and their prosimian cousins in Africa descended from
a line of primates that branched from the evolutionary tree
some 50 million years ago, long before the appearance of monkeys,
apes, and humans.
It was then that the ancestors of lemurs became
isolated in a true Lost World—the 225,000-square-mile island
of Madagascar off the southeast coast of Africa. However, many
species of lemur are rapidly approaching extinction because
of hunting, lumbering, and land-clearing for agriculture. Those
animals that survive are reclusive and largely inaccessible
to researchers, say Duke Primate Center scientists.
Because of lemurs’ ancestry, says former scientific
director Elwyn Simons, they offer important insights into evolution.
“Since lemurs are living fossils, researchers can study
their genetics, biochemistry, anatomy, and mechanics of movement
to understand the evolution of primates leading to ourselves.
Our ancestors were quite lemur-like.” Also, he says, studies
of the independent evolution of female-dominated lemur society
offers comparative insight into ape and even human society.
Faculty from Duke and elsewhere use the center to
conduct observational studies of lemur societies, since even
after decades in captivity, the intricacies of female-dominated
lemur groups are still not understood. Other studies aim at
understanding the exotic behaviors of such rare animals as the
aye-aye. Believed to be the most intelligent prosimian, the
aye-aye has an uncanny ability to locate insects deep in wood
by tapping, to perceive the shape of a buried cavity. It can
then deduce the best scheme for gnawing its way into the cavity
to extract the insect with its prehensile middle finger.
Besides studies of behavior and social interaction,
center research projects include a study on lemur diet and digestion,
since many fundamental facts about lemur physiology remain unknown.
Such studies are crucial to basic maintenance of the animals
in captivity.
Current center studies only scratch the surface
of the mysteries of the lemurs and the potential for scientific
discoveries from studying them, say center leaders. Simons emphasizes
that the continued NSF support for the center, which includes
independent reviews of its scientific value, constitutes proof
of this research potential. Also, a review of potential research
produced by Simons for the administration lists a multitude
of potential studies, ranging from cognitive research to biochemical
studies that might even offer insights into the basis of human
cancers. Simons also cites the center’s extensive fossil
collection as an integral resource at the center for researchers
seeking to understand the relationships between modern and ancient
prosimians.
According to the center leaders, lemur physiology
offers largely unexplored opportunities for studying the ingenuity
of evolution. The golden bamboo lemur, which the center plans
to acquire, subsists on a bamboo species laced with enough cyanide
to kill a human. Other lemurs tolerate foods containing toxic
tannins and alkaloids, and the sifaka readily eat poison ivy.
The extraordinary agility of the sifaka represents a good example
of the possible discoveries from studying lemur body mechanics
and neural system. Species of sifaka that evolved in regions
of widely spaced thorn-studded trees can leap dozens of feet
from tree to tree, unerringly landing with a grasp that avoids
the hazardous spikes.
Such research can be conducted without violating
the center’s policy of forbidding invasive experiments,
says Glander, citing powerful new analytical methods. “Such
technologies as MRI, CAT scans, and genetic sampling can be
done with no discomfort or harm to the animals,” he says.
The need for tissues and prosimian-cultured cell
lines is also rapidly rising, says Glander, citing his participation
on the advisory board for a new National Science Foundation-sponsored
biological supply center for which the Primate Center will represent
a unique source of prosimian tissue.
Glander advocates that the center continue to emphasize
its conservation programs, cautioning that the popular concept
of conservation as a non-scientific effort is outmoded. “Traditional
conservation efforts involved just building a fence around an
ecosystem,” he says, “but conservation biology, which
we have emphasized, is basic biological and ecological research
to understand the relationship between the organism and its
environment. This field has really come of age, as most scientists
understand that the most pressing need of the twenty-first century
is to develop a greater understanding of the diverse array of
organisms living on Earth, and human interaction with this bio-diversity.”
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Any expansion in research will take a significant
amount of money, because there have been no capital improvements out
here in thirty-six years.” Such multi-million-dollar renovations
would include more space for laboratories, offices, meeting rooms,
animal-handling rooms, and veterinary facilities, he says. Also, Glander
and his colleagues advocate constructing redesigned cages to aid both
animal care and research. Such cages include passageways for easy
animal transfer, eliminating the need for technicians to capture animals
to move them. The new winter barns, besides offering the animals refuge
from the cold, could also allow them to be released into the open
enclosures on warm winter days, which Glander says would enable year-round
behavioral research. Besides new bricks and mortar, increasing research
will require additional staff, say both Glander and Simons, including
a research manager who can give researchers personalized attention
and service.
The Duke administration has not ruled out closing the
center, but they emphasize that their preferred objective is to improve
it. Says Chafe, “There are people who are concerned that, because
we have identified the problem as requiring a decision, and we have
said the status quo is not acceptable, that means we’re automatically
committed to closing the Primate Center. And that’s not the case.
It is rather a question of recognizing that the time has come to make
a decision.”
Should university officials judge the research and education
initiatives and fund raising to have failed, any plan to close the
center would likely bring major repercussions, say the Primate Center’s
leadership and staff. For one thing, they believe that criticism from
the public and scientific community would be substantial, citing as
an example a recent letter from University of Miami anthropologist
Linda Taylor, who studies the center’s ringtail lemurs. She wrote,
“‘Disinvesting’ the Primate Center is akin to paving
the Duke Gardens to provide additional parking while saving on groundskeeping
costs, or to Yale University ‘disinvesting’ the Peabody
Museum. Such facilities are part of what makes few institutions stand
out among their peers as great universities. ‘Disinvestment’
diminishes not only research careers of many individuals, but it ultimately
diminishes the reputation of Duke University as an academic leader
in innovative research programs.”
Efforts to close the center would prove prolonged at best,
Glander says, and might not even be feasible. “If the decision
were made to close the center, it would take two to five years, mainly
finding homes for the animals or waiting until they die, which might
be even longer than five years.” Many of the animals live for
decades in captivity, he says, and zoos would have difficulty accommodating
them. “Most zoos are not capable of taking the animals and, in
fact, wouldn’t want to risk their dying and generating bad publicity.
A typical zoo wants only a couple of lemurs for exhibit, but they
don’t have room for more. Zoos don’t do research or sponsor
long-term breeding programs. They’re not interested in social
behavior or understanding the animals’ ecology.”
Center veterinarian Cathy Williams says that her experience
with scientists has convinced her that the center’s closure would
mean loss of a unique resource for prosimian tissues, as well as decades
of experience in the care and management of lemurs. “There are
a lot of people at the center with an
incredible amount of knowledge about how to handle these animals and
keep them healthy in captivity “ she says. “There is also
a huge amount of physiological, medical, and behavioral information
in records that is scientifically valuable and might be lost. That
information could not be re-created anywhere else, because no other
institution in the world matches the center in its numbers and variety
of prosimian primates.”
Finally, Simons believes that closure of the center would
end a valuable international relationship with Madagascar, including
efforts to explore its caves for lemur sub-fossils, to capture critically
endangered species for captive breeding, and to establish a self-sustaining
zoological park at Ivoloina. That cooperative effort also includes
participation in a five-year project to introduce captive-born black
and white ruffed lemurs to a Madagascar nature research, Betampona,
whose population of the animals is threatened because of lack of genetic
diversity.
A major commitment to raising funds will be critical to
meeting the Primate Center’s need for $5 million to $10 million
in facilities renovations, not to mention an estimated $20 million
needed for a permanent endowment, Glander says. “I believe that
the director has to be turned loose, and that there is potential out
there for fund raising.” In particular, he says, many potential
donors are especially interested in species preservation.
David Ingram, a longtime supporter of the center, is one
such benefactor. His donations include $1 million to its endowment
and support for the first new winter barn for the animals. “It
does seem to me that species as interesting as these lemurs deserve
more attention than they have been getting,” says Ingram, chairman
and president of Tennessee-based Ingram Entertainment. “I have
felt that the center is a worthwhile cause, and I’ve wanted the
Duke administration to get more excited about what they have in the
Primate Center. But there are many worthy causes and needs within
any university, so I’m not going to be so presumptuous as to
sit in [President Keohane’s] chair and say, ‘Well, here’s
how you should divide up your money,’ because I am not qualified
to make that type of decision. But I have felt good about the money
that I have given to the Primate Center, because I think that it at
least has shown the administration that somebody cares about what’s
going on and thinks that they’re doing a good job.”
To Provost Lange, fund raising will likely become far
easier with an enhanced research program. “It’s hard to
raise money if you don’t have a clear picture of the mission,
and both our internal and external reviews confirmed that the center’s
mission is inappropriately unclear,” he says. “As long as
there’s been this cloud over the Primate Center about what exactly
is its contribution to the university’s broader missions in teaching
and research, it’s been difficult to raise money.”
Deciding the future of the Duke Primate Center is certainly
an extremely complex, and even emotional, endeavor. Ambitions must
be balanced with resources, and potentials with realities. But as
excruciatingly difficult and multidimensional as the decision process
is, it represents only one of many such challenges Duke will face
as it heightens its profile among research universities. ”
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