A northwestern Madagascar lemur whose males and females have different coat colours.
Males are dark brown to black; females have chestnut to golden-brown bodies. Face-framing hair is black in males and whitish in females.
Researchers followed one habituated group of black lemurs in Lokobe Forest on Nosy Be, north-west Madagascar, from September 1992 to August 1994. They recorded 561 daytime hours and 472 night-time hours, revealing seasonal and day–night differences in feeding.
Fruit dominated the diet in both periods, but the daytime menu included more kinds of food and more leaves. Feeding occupied the smallest share of both day and night from March to June, when ripe fruit was scarce. In August through October and again in December, the group spent a greater proportion of the night feeding than of the day.
The group also changed feeding height: it fed more often in the undercanopy, 2–15 m above ground, during the day and in the canopy above 15 m at night. The observations show how fruit availability and daily timing shaped feeding in this Lokobe group.
IUCN Red List (IUCN SSC Primate Specialist Group) · Endangered (EN) · Global
The global IUCN Red List assessment published in 2020 classified the black lemur as Endangered (EN), based on an assessment dated 7 May 2018. The population trend was recorded as decreasing, with a suspected decline of more than 50% over three generations. The assessment identifies forest loss and fragmentation, hunting for bushmeat, and illegal capture for the pet trade among the ongoing threats.