Since the summer of 2002 we have been studying cognition in lemurs using a variety of methods. Prosimians (lemurs) are a suborder of primates that split from the common ancestor of monkeys, apes, and humans approximately 47-54 million years ago and are our best living model of the earliest primate mind.

The Duke Lemur Center has the largest living collection of prosimian primates and therefore offers unparalleled opportunities for comparative cognition. Thus far we have only trained and tested a handful of species. Many of our studies require training lemurs to respond via touch sensitive screens hooked up to computers and pellet delivery systems. Unexpectedly many of the lemurs prefer to respond with their noses rather than their hands!

Projects:
1) Serial Learning in Ring-tailed Lemurs (Lemur catta)
2) Transitive Inference in Mongoose Lemurs (Eulemur mongoz)
3) Numerical Cognition in Ring-tailed Lemurs (touch-screen method)
4) Numerical Cognition in Mongoose Lemurs (other methods)
5) Decision Making in Ring-tailed and Mongoose Lemurs