What lemurs can you own as a pet?

No, lemurs would make bad pets for many reasons:

• Lemurs, like other exotic animals kept as pets, are not domesticated, so aggression can be hard to predict and control. (Bites can easily become infected and life-threatening.)

• Controlling where they defecate and urinate would also be a big challenge, especially if kept indoors.

• Many lemur species are highly social, and having a solitary lemur would be traumatic, while keeping more than one could result in fighting (depending on their social structure in the wild). In the case of ring-tails, specifically, unrelated females might fight frequently, and all females would occasionally bully a male companion. Its difficult to predict how males would interact.

• Lemurs require specialized diets, which pet stores and most veterinarians will know nothing about.

• Most veterinarians will not accept lemurs as patients due to a lack of familiarity with exotic species. And even if the vet was willing to see the lemur, there's no guarantee that he/she will know enough about their specialized Biology to make proper decisions about their care.

• Since lemurs are primates, they can catch and spread some human diseases.

• If you were to have a lemur you wanted to get rid of, animal shelters would not take them.

• It is illegal in most states in the US to keep a lemur as a pet. It is very difficult to tell where a lemur came from, and could have been illegally smuggled out of Madagascar, regardless of what the "breeder" may claim. Nearly all lemurs are endangered, so smuggling lemurs is not only highly illegal, but also threatens wild populations with extinction by fueling demand for pet lemurs and by removing individuals from dwindling populations.