Learning Lemurs

“Where did I put my keys?”, “What did I come in here for?” As we get older, we all become a bit forgetful, but some people seem to lose important brain skills faster than others. However, studying this kind of decline in people isn't easy because we age over several decades. Instead, scientists are turning to mouse lemurs, small primates that can be bred in captivity and live for up to 15 years. They also show many of the age-related brain changes that are seen in humans, and are quick to learn relatively complex tasks. These pictures are used as part of a touch-screen learning test for lemurs, revealing differences between older and younger lemurs and between individuals of the same age. Like people, a lemur's memory gets worse as it gets older, so these little animals could be a useful model for studying human ageing.

Written by Kat Arney

Kat Arney

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Dr Kat Arney is an award-winning science writer, broadcaster and public speaker, and is the founder and Creative Director of First Create The Media.

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• Image by Elke Zimmermann and colleagues
• University of Veterinary Medicine Hannover, Germany
• Originally published under a Creative Commons Licence (BY 4.0)
• Research published in PLOS One, October 2014