Dottie the Ring-Tailed Lemur

Dottie wants to travel far and wide searching for her brothers and sisters. Photos of her travels and those she meets along the way would be great too.

Please move along within two weeks. Thanks!

Dottie is a small plush Beanie Boo keyring attached to her trackable and a small keyring that details her mission for those geocachers who do not have instant internet access out in the wilderness.

But what do we know about these gorgeous creatures?

Found only in the southern part of Madagascar in the dry forest and bush, the ring-tailed lemur is a large, vocal primate with brownish-grey fur and a distinctive tail with alternating black and white rings. Male and female ring-tailed lemurs are similar physically. They are roughly the same size, measuring about 42.5cm from head to rump and weighing roughly 2.25kg.

Highly social creatures, ring-tailed lemurs live in groups averaging 17 members. Their society is female-dominant, and a group will often contain multiple breeding females. Females reproduce starting at 3 years of age, generally giving birth to one baby a year. When born, a ring-tailed lemur baby weighs less than 100g. The newborn is carried on its mother’s chest for 1-2 weeks and then is carried on her back. At 2 weeks, the baby starts eating solid food and begins venturing out on its own, but the juvenile is not fully weaned until 5 months of age.

Although they are capable climbers, ring-tailed lemurs spend a third of their time on the ground foraging for food. They range far to find leaves, flowers, bark, sap, and small invertebrates to eat. When the lemurs travel over ground, they keep their tails in the air to ensure everyone in the group is in sight and stays together. Aside from using visual cues, ring-tailed lemurs also communicate via scent and vocalizations. They mark their territory by scent. A male lemur will also engage in stink fights during mating seasons, wiping his tail with the scent glands on his wrists and waving it at another male while staring menacingly. Eventually one male will back down and run away.

Vocally, ring-tailed lemurs have several different alarms calls that alert members to danger. They have several predators, including fossas (mammals related to the mongoose), Madagascar Harrier-hawks, Madagascar buzzards, Madagascar ground boas, civets, and domestic cats and dogs. Ring-tailed lemurs are a near-threatened species. The main threat to their population is habitat destruction. Much of their habitat is being converted to farmland or burned for the production of charcoal. However, the ring-tailed lemur is popular in zoos, and they do comparatively well in captivity and reproduce regularly. In captivity, ring-tailed lemurs can live for nearly 30 years, compared to up to 20 in the wild.