The Ring-Tailed Lemur

A while ago while visiting Spain I was in the area of Fuengirola which has its own Bioparc/zoo

Within there they have a limited time keeper lead walkthrough with their Lemur colonies and they are for me some of the most photogenic animals I have come across.

In particular the Ring-Tailed Lemur

Now I had not planned on a zoo visit while on this trip but having some free time, lovely weather and the camera available I really couldn't resist taking an afternoon out to come and visit

Although as this was unplanned, normally I'd have my 50-135 F2.8 or 70-200 f2.8 for zoo photography, but I only packed the 16-85mm lens, so anything close up shot wise I was totally not expecting to manage!

But as luck would have it, Bioparc Fuengirola run limited keeper lead visitations into their lemur habitat which really allows you to get up close with the animals, and if they so choose, interact with you (I had this happen once else where!)

The Ring-Tailed Lemur's come from Madagascar and known to live among the open areas and forests within the south western area of the Island

For what is quite a popular species in many of the zoos in the world, there are more of them in captivity then there are within the wild, as from looking into this, there is believed to be around only 2000 of them in the wild today compared to over 2500 in captivity.

Sadly captive release and reintroduction into the general population isn't really in consideration, it has been attempted and noted to have gone well, with a release done on St Catherines Island of the coast of US state Georgia where they appear to have adapted to their environment well and acting in a natural way.

Anyway, for those interested, pictures were taken with the Pentax K-3 with Pentax 16-85mm f3.5-5.6 lens.