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Do Lemur’s Blink?

There’s no feeling quite like eating an overripe pear over your kitchen sink in your dark house at 1:50 am on a Tuesday night (Wednesday morning?) with only the kitchen Alexa playing smooth jazz to entertain you as you suffer an internal debate about whether lemurs blink. This is where we find our blog writer today, dear readers. Confused, equally intrigued and horrified, disappointed in her juiceless pear, and slowly soothed and subdued by Alexa’s Amazon generated jazz mix. Have you ever seen a lemur? They don’t have eyelashes so presumably that would make blinking fairly inconsequential since protecting our eyes from dust and other particles is a major purpose of blinking. But like all things in life, the internet never agrees with itself and actually it’s more complicated than it seems. Let’s dive right in.

According to the Duke Lemur Center (they’re cool, check them out), there are 108 currently living lemur species. The Duke Lemur Center has the most diverse group of lemurs outside of Madagascar and 95% of all lemur species are threatened with extinction. King Julian, Maurice, and Mort from the movie Madagascar are also lemurs (ring-tailed, aye-aye, and Goodman’s mouse respectively). In case you’ve never seen or thought about a lemur before, here’s two pictures I got online:

Okay, now that we’ve established what lemurs are, let’s address the real burning question: do they blink? According to Safari AI, yes, lemurs blink. Lemurs are one of the few primates to have a fully developed, clear eyelid called a nictitating membrane that keeps the eye moist. According to a study on blinking in 71 different types of primates, found that the blink rate of lemurs was correlated with body and group size. Additionally, lemurs have complex communication skills that rely on blinking to communicate and according to the Metro Richmond Zoo, they use rapid-fire eye blinking to scare off enemies. Can you imagine these things rapidly blinking?

However, not all people agree that lemurs blink. In fact, most animal fun fact websites mention that they don’t but then refuse to cite a reliable source (besides themselves) claiming that. Actually both sides of the heated debate seem to lack proper citations (even the ones on blinking communication). There is also a phenomenon called globe retraction which might aid in blink communication but is not clear whether it would allow a full blink or whether it actually exists in lemurs at all (due to lack of a solid source). The general consensus is decidedly lacking despite the importance of lemur blink communication and more research is needed (but being strepsirrhines they rely more on scent anyways-cited the Monkey Knower). If you have more information, please supply it. 

Edit: the Monkey Knower was consulted and can confirm that all primates can have eyelids and blink. When asked about the inconsistency of online materials, the Monkey Knower replied that the “internet still thinks racoons and red pandas are related. It’s not always right” (January 8, 2025 correspondence). The Monkey Knower’s references are seeing lemurs blink in real life.

Some more interesting facts about lemurs: 

1. They have two tongues (the smaller, non-traditional tongue is used to remove debris from the tooth comb and is called a sublingua); 

2. The largest lemur and primate to have ever evolved on Madagascar was the now extinct Archaeoindris fontoynonitii which was relative to that of a male gorilla; 

3. Lemurs are the only non-human primates with blue eyes; 

4. Aye-ayes are the only primates that use echolocation; 

5. Most lemur species are matriarchal (lead by a dominant female). 

Not related to the topic of lemurs but definitely related to them, the only venomous primate is the pygmy slow loris which secretes a toxin from sweat glands near their elbows and can incapacitate predators as large as humans. The following pictures have been taken from the Duke Lemur Center’s Instagram page (please check it out and support):