On April 10, 1994, the Duke Lemur Center welcomed the birth of a baby lemur who would go on to become famous as a TV star. Known by his keepers as Jovian, the handsome Coquerel’s sifaka was famous around the world as Zoboomafoo, the leaping, prancing star of the children’s television series by the same name, which aired for 65 episodes on PBS from 1999 to 2001. The show’s creators, Chris and Martin Kratt, shot hundreds of hours of footage of Jovian at the Lemur Center, though most of the time he was played by a talking lemur puppet. At the time of his death, at age 20 due to kidney failure, Jovian had fathered 12 infants with two more on the way.
On This Day: April 10, 1994
