In a perfect convergence of World Lemur Day (Oct. 25) and Monty Python founder John Cleese’s 80th birthday (Oct. 27), the Duke Lemur Center is releasing a new commercial for their Adopt-A-Lemur program that features Cleese’s voiceover talents.
Cleese voices the thoughts of a lemur who sounds quite a bit like the British comedian in the cheeky 1-minute video and asks viewers if they would like to virtually adopt him and his friends “by sending cold, hard cash.”
Watch the video and learn the back-story here: https://lemur.duke.edu/cleese/
Cleese has been a friend of the Duke Lemur Center and a fan of lemurs since his work on a short documentary in Madagascar called “In The Wild,” about the Duke Lemur Center’s efforts to reintroduce captive-raised animals to the wild. In a 2014 interview, Cleese called the film one of his favorite projects ever. “It enabled me to make a few sort of jokes that I hadn’t made before,” he said.
Proceeds from the U.K. premiere of Cleese’s movie “Fierce Creatures” helped support the reintroduction program. Cleese is such a well-known fan of the prosimian primates that a species has even been named after him: Avahi cleesi, Cleese’s Wooly Lemur.
To view the video online and learn more about Adopt-A-Lemur, please visit https://lemur.duke.edu/adopt/