Brown lemur is the common name for the genus Eulemur. They are medium sized primates that live exclusively on Madagascar.
The fur of the brown lemurs is long and usually reddish-brown. Often there is sexual dimorphism in coloration, such as in the Black Lemur. Brown lemurs are from 30 to 50 cm in length, with a tail that is as long or significantly longer than the body. They weigh from two to four kg.
Brown lemurs are predominantly diurnal rain forests inhabitants. They are skillful climbers and can cross large distances in trees by jumping, using their non-prehensile tails to aid in balancing. At the soil they move almost exclusively on all four. Brown lemurs live together in groups of five to 15 members.
The diet of the brown lemurs is almost exclusively herbivorous: flowers, fruits and leaves. In captivity, they have been shown to also eat insects.
Gestation is 125 days. During the summer or early fall (shortly before the beginning of the rainy season), the females birth their young, usually two offspring. The young clasp firmly to the fur of their mother, then ride on her back when they are older. After about five months they are weaned, and they are fully mature at about 18 months of age. The life expectancy of the brown lemurs can be up to 18 years, longer in captivity.
The usage of Eulemur for this group of animals that includes the mongoose lemur, fl lemur and crowned lemur as well was chosen by Simons and Rumpler (1988) to distinguish them from ring-tailed lemurs on anatomical grounds.
Several investigators have made major contributions to our understanding of the taxonomic impact of these karyotypes as well as their significance for the fertility or infertility of the many hybrids that have been reported (Gray, 1972; Rumpler, 1975).
We have had the good fortune of receiving tissues for karyotyping from the Duke Primate Center in North Carolina and found specimens of Eulemur fulvus collaris with chromosome numbers of 50, 51, and 52, while earlier this species was always judged to have 2n=52 only.
This is the smallest species belonging to the genus Eulemur.
It forages at all levels of the canopy, though it seems to prefer the lower levels where there is less competition with Sandford's Brown lemur (Eulemur fulvus sanfordi) (2).
Mating occurs in May and June and, after a gestation period of about 125 days, one or two young are born.
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