Go wild at the next Secret Science Club with primatologist and explorer Patricia Chapple Wright...
Madagascar is a strange place. It’s sometimes
called the 8th continent due to its unique
evolution and physical isolation. Ninety percent of its wildlife is found
nowhere else, and its lemurs
are Earth’s most diverse group of
primates. With no monkeys to compete with, Madagascar's lemurs evolved
into over 100 species, from the 3.5-inch Berthe’s mouse lemur (the smallest primate in the world) to
the now-extinct giant sloth lemur (which weighed as much as a gorilla).
When primatologist
Patricia Chapple Wright first
visited Madagascar in the 1980s,
she discovered the golden
bamboo lemur, so called because of the golden fur on its head and belly and a habit of eating cyanide-laced
bamboo shoots that would kill any other primate. At that time, the lemur's rain forest habitat was on the verge of being chopped down. To save the lemurs, Dr. Wright lobbied the Malagasy government and local villagers—as well as conservationists around the
world. Her efforts led to the creation of Ranomafana National Park, where she's been studying the social and family behaviors of wild lemurs for three decades, and
advocating for the preservation of Madagascar’s endangered wildlife.
Winner of
the MacArthur “Genius Grant” and the 2014 Indianapolis Prize for her extraordinary
contributions to wildlife conservation, Dr. Wright is one of the world’s foremost experts on lemurs, professor of
anthropology at Stony Brook University,
and founder of Centre ValBio
Research Station in Madagascar.
She is the author of over 150 scientific papers, as well as the books High
Moon Over the Amazon: My Quest to Understand the Monkeys of the Night and For the Love of Lemurs: My Life in the Wilds
of Madagascar. She has organized and led over 40 expeditions to study the
world’s primates. She and her field research have been featured on film in Michael Apted’s Me and Isaac Newton and the 3-D IMAX movie, Island of Lemurs.
--Try
our wild cocktail of the night, the Nocturnal Prowler
--Swing
by your tail to almost-human grooves
--Stick
around for the eye-popping Q&A
This lemur-tastic edition of the Secret Science Club meets Tuesday,
September 22, 8 pm @ the Bell House, 149 7th St. (between 2nd and 3rd
avenues) in Gowanus, Brooklyn. Subway: F
or G to 4th Ave;
R to 9th St.
Doors open at 7:30 pm. Please bring ID: 21+. No cover. Just
bring your smart self.
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