Experience My Color Vision Research and The Duke Lemur Center In Virtual Reality On Google Expeditions

I am really excited to share with you this amazing news! Three of the Google Expeditions that I worked on over the past year is now live! Just in time for World Lemur Day!

You can now go on a virtual tour "Can Ruffed Lemurs See Red?" to watch me do my lemur research at Duke Lemur Center. In this expedition, you will be able to see my research area and experience my color vision research as if you are there in person! What else can you see in this expedition? The surprise awaits ....

There is also a simulated expedition "Color Blindness in Lemurs" that lets you perceive the world as a dichromatic or trichromatic lemur! This collaboration with Vida Systems models polymorphic color vision in lemurs and lets viewer experience their world through virtual reality. What does the world look like if you are a color blind lemur? Take a look yourself ...

Lastly, you can take a virtual tour of "The Duke Lemur Center" to learn more about this research facility and the lemurs that call this special place home. Meet some of the rare and elusive lemurs.

Here is the list of the three Google Expeditions, with a brief description of the expedition:

1. Can Ruffed Lemurs See Red?
Ruffed lemurs are usually colorblind—all males are—but some females can see something the others can’t: the color red. But how do you ask a lemur to tell you what they see? Learn about Raymond Vagell’s color vision research at Duke Lemur Center. He asks lemurs to show him whether they can see red using a touchscreen. 

2. Color Blindness in Lemurs
Lemurs are a group of small primates found only on the small island of Madagascar. Due to Madagascar’s highly variable climate lemur evolution has produced a wide range of species, remarkable for such a small geographic area. Studies into Lemur’s visual system has revealed what colors these creatures can, and cannot see.

3. The Duke Lemur Center
The Duke Lemur Center in Durham, North Carolina (USA) has the largest collection of captive lemurs outside of Madagascar. Its mission is to advance lemur science and conservation, and is also open to the public for guided tours.

To find out how Google Expeditions work, click here. To access these expeditions, you'll need to download Google Expeditions and use a Google virtual reality headset such as a Google Cardboard. Follow instructions on the app on how launch Google Expeditions and view these lemur expeditions. Search the keyword "lemurs"

#IPSASP16 Poster Session

Novel skill acquisition in ruffed lemurs (Varecia spp.): Preliminary Data from SMARTA Color Vision Study at Duke Lemur Center

Raymond Vagell, Vance J. Vagell, Stephanie J. Tepper, Isabel M. Avery, Rachel L. Jacobs, James Gordon, & Andrea L. Baden.

Psychophysical studies are necessary for many questions related to the evolution of primate sensory systems, particularly in primate color vision, but such studies remain limited, especially in many lemur species. This may be in part because lemurs require extensive training to novel procedures. We trained ruffed lemurs (Varecia spp.) on the Subject-Mediated Automatic Remote Testing Apparatus (SMARTA) for a color vision pilot study at Duke Lemur Center from May to November, 2015. 18 animals were initially used but only 5 were trained. We selected animals based on their initial interest in participating and their continued interest across the first 20 sessions. Training time ranged from 42 to 265 minutes, across 32 to 172 sessions. We found no correlation between total training time and age, r(4) = 0.088, p = 0.888, or between number of training sessions and age, r(4) = 0.048, p = 0.940.Furthermore, we found no significant difference between sexes in mean total training time (t(3) = 0.29, p = 0.605) or total number of training sessions (t(3) = 0.243, p = 0.824). While acknowledging our sample size, we found no evidence that training is influenced by age and sex. Although training requires an initial time investment that varies across individual study subjects, the SMARTA helps to eliminate user bias and error, which outweighs the time investment.

A copy of my IPS/ASP 2016 poster (Vagell et al., 2016) can be downloaded here.

If you are interested in SMARTA, a copy of that poster (Vagell, Vagell, & Baden, 2015) can be downloaded here.

I'm at The Joint International Primatological Society & American Society of Primatologists Conference in Chicago this week! #IPSASP16

I'm at IPS/ASP 2016 in Chicago this week! So excited to hear all these talks and to network with everyone.

I will be presenting a poster on training my ruffed lemurs to use SMARTA. The poster will be on Thursday, and I will have a PDF version of it online tomorrow.

If you are interested in SMARTA and my color vision study, you can read about it on:

Duke Lemur Center Spring 2016 Newsletter

Lemur Conservation Network

My ASP poster from last year! (Vagell et al., 2015)

I'm also currently looking for research assistants and am hoping I can find potential candidates at the conference. Know someone that like working with lemurs and are great with technology? Send them my way! Here's the Job Listing.

Please come talk to me at the conference! :)

Read About My Ruffed Lemur Color Vision Research in Duke Lemur Center's Spring 2016 Newsletter

My ruffed lemur color vision research at Duke Lemur Center was recently highlighted in their 2016 Spring Newsletter! Here's a link to the PDF version of this newsletter which I have uploaded on Research Gate.

A preview of my article in the Duke Lemur Center 2016 Spring Newsletter

To sign up for Duke Lemur Center newsletter please click here.

I Talked About SMARTA and Ruffed Lemur Color Vision A Lot This Week

Duke Lemur Center presentation cover page

I gave a 30 minute presentation on Tuesday at Duke Lemur Center this week for their "Lemurs, Science, and Beer" seminar. The title of the talk is "Do You See What I See? Studying Ruffed Lemur (Varecia spp.) Color Vision using SMARTA".  In this presentation, I did a brief talk about how color vision came to be and what the world might look like for ruffed lemurs if they cannot see red or if they can see red. Then, I talked about my research questions and how I try to answer them by using SMARTA.

Hey, I know this Raymond Vagell guy! 

The event had a great turn out. It even attracted a few public attendees as I had advertised the talk on Facebook and Twitter. I'm glad that I was able to talk about what SMARTA is and how it is used to study ruffed lemur color vision to the DLC staff because they've seen me conducting my research but probably doesn't really know what I'm doing. Thanks to all my friends who came to support me. 

That's Carme using SMARTA

On Wednesday, I had the opportunity to talk about SMARTA and ruffed lemur color vision to Scaling Stem participants who came to visit DLC. I talked about how SMARTA came to be and how it was built. Then, I showed the participants how SMARTA works. Because this is a women in STEM group, it was apropos to have Halley demonstrate how SMARTA works. Without skipping a beat, Halley did her color vision trials perfectly and her enthusiasm wow-ed the crowd.

Giving a talk to Scaling Stem participants. Helping me demonstrate SMARTA is my lemur assistant, Halley

On Thursday, I gave a brief talk to a group of college freshmen that are interested in animal cognition studies. Though the talk was brief, I was able to share some tips on designing animal studies and things to expect when working with animals. This time, Carme helped demonstrate SMARTA. She also wow-ed the crowd with her cognitive skills in discrimination tasks.

Giving a brief talk about my color vision project 

This has been a long week! But, I am glad that I was given the opportunity to talk about my research and sharing my stories not only to the DLC staff, but also to educators and students. This week is also my last week at DLC for awhile. I am flying back to NYC and will be back to DLC periodically until the study is done around August. My assistant will be continuing this study while I am away. Thanks to Dr. Erin Ehmke for giving me the opportunities to share my work with the DLC family, educators and students.

Lemur, Science, and Beer Talk: April 5th, 4PM at Duke Lemur Center

Come join me on Tuesday, April 5th at 4PM where I will be presenting a talk on my ruffed lemur color vision study titled "Do You See What I See? Studying Ruffed Lemur Color Vision using SMARTA. I will talk about the ruffed lemurs and their color vision, what SMARTA is, as well as how this study is conducted.

This event is open to the public and will be held at Duke Lemur Center in Lemur Landing (where the gift store is). I've started a Facebook event for this talk. Hope to see you all there!


Duke Lemur Center 

3705 Erwin Rd, Durham, NC 27705

Phone: (919) 489-3364
Lemur Landing is directly right in front of the parking lot.

Slow and Steady, Get Me Ready

It's been a few weeks since my previous post. We are still working with Carme, Pyxis, Celeste, and Pandora. Next week, we will be working with a new female. Great progress with Carme. Pyxis ... not so much. Celeste and Pandora are both starting to touch the screen so it's heading to the right direction.

Carme had improved tremendously since my last post. We have been training her daily to reinforce her to correctly station in front of SMARTA and to touch the squares deliberately instead of nonchalantly putting her hands between the squares or just touching the sides of the square. We also turn off the screen for a few seconds when she touches the incorrect stimuli or when we want to extinguish a certain behavior. It seem to have helped and by early this week, Carme is less frantic when using SMARTA and very rarely is swiping her hands all around the screen. When she make an incorrect choice, sometimes she gets a bit frantic but generally a major improvement than what she used to be a few weeks back. We thought that turning the screen off and turning it back on when she's paying attention to the screen helps to teach her that when she makes a mistake, it will take a few seconds before she can try to get a craisin. Of course, you don't want to turn off the screen for too long or it would stress the animal out. We generally turn it off for less than 5 seconds unless the animal is not paying attention to the screen (eg. looking at another animal, listening to alarm calls, etc).

By the end of next week, Carme will be done with the study as she would have done enough sessions for my data collection. I have enjoyed working with her. While she was a bit challenging to work with earlier on, and that she had a lot of behaviors that we had to extinguished, she was such a fun participant.

Week 4: Girls Just Want To Have Fun

Girls, they want to have fun.

Oh girls just want to have fun.

They want to have fun!

- Cyndi Lauper

YES! The girls just want to have fun. I'd say SMARTA is pretty fun for Celeste, Pandora, Pyxis, and Carme! And for some reason, Cyndi reminded me of the red ruffed lemurs.

This week I got to work with 2 new red ruffed lemurs. Pandora and her one-year old daughter Celeste joins the rotation to be part of my SMARTA color vision study. Celeste was very excited on her first day and her enthusiasm continues to the second day. She is currently my youngest participant. Celeste's mother, Pandora, was equally enthusiastic to participate in the study. Both had participated for two days and will continue their sessions next week.

Caught Celeste mid chewing craisins. Looks like she's very excited.

Pandora in her red (green? dum dum dum) perch.

Pyxis continues to be cautious around SMARTA and gets easily distracted by her mate and son. Pyxis is a stark contrast from Pandora (and Celeste) where they are not distracted by the males and instead focus intently on SMARTA. Though at the end of the week,  Pyxis started to approach SMARTA immediately when the sessions start. Currently, we are only reinforcing her to sit in front of SMARTA so she'll station perfectly in front of SMARTA before we start reinforcing her to look at the screen. Towards the end of the week, Pyxis has started to pay attention to the SMARTA screen. These are crucial small details that we have to pay attention to so that we are not reinforcing bad or superstitious behavior when using SMARTA. This is Pyxis's second week and even though she doesn't share the same enthusiasm as Pandora and Celeste, it is very common for animals to be apprehensive to novel objects (especially a towering object that makes noise). Luckily, Pyxis is whistle trained (meaning she know what a whistle cue means) so it is very easy to reinforce her and that she probably knows she is doing something right when she hears the whistle. Craisins help a lot too ;)

Pyxis starting to pay attention to the tablet on SMARTA

Carme continues to have at least 2 sessions per week since I came back to Duke Lemur Center. We addressed her left hand preference and her tendency to touch the left square at the beginning of each trial regardless of what color the square is. We don't know if she is has trouble using her left hand to reach to right square or if it's a superstitious behavior. Over the past few weeks, she had progressed tremendously and we feel like she finally "got it" this week. We ran a few testing trials with her and I think we are comfortable enough to say that she had graduated from training to fully automated testing. She should be on testing sessions next week.

Carme looking intently at the red square

Whistle Training with Carme

I talked about bridging here, where a bridge is a stimulus that "bridges" a correct response to a reinforcement (usually a food reward) and is almost often an auditory stimulus such as the sound of a whistle, clicker or praises (Good girl!). A bridge is usually an anticipation of something positive going to happen and bridging tells an animal that they did the desired behavior and a reward is on its way.

Carme touching the red square on SMARTA

At the beginning of this study, we thought that the sound of the conveyer belt inside SMARTA is a good bridge for the ruffed lemurs. We soon learn that it wasn't the case, and that they are probably not paying attention to the sound of the conveyer belt or that they might need to be trained to recognize that the sound of the conveyer belt is a bridge.

As most ruffed lemurs at the Duke Lemur Center are whistle-trained, we have incorporated the whistle as a bridge when we train them to use SMARTA. Here's a short video of Carme doing a red and gray discrimination task. Notice that the moment she touches the red square, a whistle is used to bridge her correct behavior to a craisin that falls off the chute a few seconds later.


Imagine without the whistle. Carme touches the red square and looks to the left. A craisin falls off the chute. The duration between touching the red box and looking to the left only takes a few seconds but that is also how long it takes for SMARTA to dispense a food reward. Carme might then associate looking to the left with a food reward, or any other behaviors she did after touching the red square.

Another positive aspect of using a whistle as a bridge is that we can tell the lemur almost instantaneously that they did a desired behavior as opposed to just giving them a food reward. Without a bridge, it might take more time for a lemur to learn the correct behavior or worse, associating an incorrect behavior with a food reward.

Week 2: MORE Pyxis and Carme

This week I worked with Pyxis and Carme again. Currently they are the only two red ruffed lemurs that I am working with but once Carme has been trained, we will train more female lemurs. I hope that this birth cycle brings more female babies. Would be nice to have a large sample to continue as my PhD project.

Pyxis being reinforced to pay attention to the touch screen.

Pyxis is starting to learn that the big black box with a red screen is giving her treats but she hasn't quite associate the apparatus with food reward just yet. We have to rapidly reinforce her (giving her a lot of treats) when she is in front of SMARTA so she learns that the black box is giving her food rewards but it is imperative that she stays in front of SMARTA for that to happen. It may take well over a few weeks for her to make that connection, but in due time she will learn to associate SMARTA with food reward and mentally stimulating activities (think video games!).

Carme continues to be trained that she needs to touch the red square to get a food reward. She associates touching a square for food reward but still hasn't make the connection of touching the red square for food reward. She is close though as most of the time, her "incorrect" choices are just her trying to lean on the screen (her initial touch) and then touching the red square. Usually when she lean on the screen, she is touching the side of the screen with the incorrect choice. Because SMARTA is programmed to react to the initial touch, it will register as her "choice" thus resulting in a lot of incorrect choices should we run the test trials with her right now.

We are also training her that she can lean on SMARTA but she'll have to touch the acrylic part (shell) of SMARTA. Most of our sessions now are slowly approximating her from touching the middle of the screen to moving towards the middle of the square so that she knows she has to deliberately touch a square to make a choice and not just wily nilly touching the screen for food reward. We think it'll take another week or so before she is ready for testing.

Carme touching the center of the touchscreen but
some part of her hand is in the red square.

Carme touching the center of the red square. We are slowly trying to approximate
her from touching the middle of touchscreen (pictured above) to touching the center of the square.

I will be working with Pyxis and Carme again next week. On Monday, we will have a routine animal welfare observation. I think this is an annual routine, which I had one last year. It's good to know that Duke cares about the welfare of animals used in research.

I Was Featured on Lemur Conservation Network (LCN)

Thank you Lemur Conservation Network (LCN) for featuring me in your blog. I talked about my research background and my current research on color vision with the ruffed lemurs at Duke Lemur Center.

Click here to read more.

Photos and Videos From Duke Lemur Center Instagram "Meet The Scientist"

Earlier last week I was asked by Chris Smith, Education Specialist at Duke Lemur Center to talk about my research on their Instagram page. I was very excited to be able to engage the readers and Instagram followers, and talk about my color vision research as well as sharing interesting photos and videos of the ruffed lemurs. I have consolidated all the photos and videos I posted on Instagram below for posterity as well as those that cannot access Instagram. Click on the link below the photos to get to the original Instagram post.

I will also embed the original Instagram photos with captions and comments in separate posts. [June 30th] [July 1st] [July 2nd] [July 3rd].Thanks to those that participated!

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Raymond Vagell - Ruffed Lemurs Color Vision Instagram: July 3rd, 2015

Today I am posting short clip of Halley doing a two-choice discrimination task. I posted a video earlier this week of her doing a two-choice discrimination task with red and gray stimuli. This time, Halley will try to solve the task with red and green stimuli. Watch her solve the task! Anyone know why I'm testing her with red and green? Please Like and Comment. Tag your friends if you think they like lemurs! Video by @prancingpapio #dukelemurcenter #lemurs #lemur #lemuria #lemurian #animaltraining #positivereinforcement #primate #primateofinstagram #primates #ruffedlemur #blackandwhiteruffedlemur #varecia #variegata #colsci #color #colorvision #colorscience #animals #animal #animalcognition #cognition #cognitive #psychophysics #psychophysiology #psychology #anthropology #primatology #SMARTA #prancingpapio

A video posted by Duke Lemur Center (@dukelemurcenter) on Jul 3, 2015 at 5:54am PDT

Carme, a red ruffed lemur (Varecia variegata rubra) showing us a beautiful side profile. Carme and her brothers, Puck & Titan, are triplets and are part of my color vision study. Please Like and Comment. Tag your friends if you think they like lemurs! Photo by @prancingpapio #dukelemurcenter #lemurs #lemur #lemuria #lemurian #animaltraining #positivereinforcement #primate #primateofinstagram #primates #ruffedlemur #redruffedlemur #varecia #variegata #rubra #primatology #SMARTA #prancingpapio

A photo posted by Duke Lemur Center (@dukelemurcenter) on Jul 3, 2015 at 10:49am PDT

Group picture! My research assistant, Stephanie Tepper, and I in front of SMARTA. #SMARTA or Subject-Mediated Automatic Remote Testing Apparatus is the apparatus we use to test color vision in ruffed lemurs. Thank you Stephanie for helping me trained these lemurs and continuing to do so while I fly back to #NYC for the rest of July! A quick shout out to my adviser Dr. Andrea Baden and our lab, Primate Molecular Ecology Lab (#PMEL) at #HunterCollege #CUNY @huntercollege Thank you all for sticking around and your interest in my research, as well as the lemurs at #DukeLemurCenter. We will be at Duke Lemur Center this summer to continue working on our color vision study. Hopefully we will be able to share our findings with y'all soon! I hope everyone here in the #USA has a Happy Fourth of July and a happy weekend for those around the world. Thank you @dukelemurcenter for giving me this opportunity to spread my science. Unfortunately this will be my last post as the week is wrapping up. If you have any questions or comments, please stick around and continue the conversation. Gratefully yours, #RaymondVagell. 😁👍👋💗🐵 Photo by @prancingpapio

A photo posted by Duke Lemur Center (@dukelemurcenter) on Jul 3, 2015 at 2:42pm PDT

Raymond Vagell - Ruffed Lemurs Color Vision Instagram: July 2nd, 2015

Time to put a face to the person you've been talking to this whole week. What about a #TBT? Here's Kizzy and I when I first met her and her boys at #DukeLemurCenter last year. Photo by @prancingpapio, taken by David Haring. #lemurs #lemur #lemuria #lemurian #animaltraining #positivereinforcement #primate #primateofinstagram #primates #ruffedlemur #blackandwhiteruffedlemur #varecia #variegata #prancingpapio #Asian #AsianAmerican #academic #academia #scientist #scientists #LGBT #QueerScientist

A photo posted by Duke Lemur Center (@dukelemurcenter) on Jul 2, 2015 at 5:15am PDT

Color vision is very important in primates. Presumably, the ability to perceive red is advantageous for finding ripe fruits in ruffed lemurs as they are frugivores. But do you know that all male ruffed lemurs cannot perceive red? The gene to perceive red is a sex-linked trait in ruffed lemurs and only females can inherit this gene to perceive red. The inability to perceive red is commonly known as "color blind" or dichromat while being a trichromat generally means an individual can perceive red. Most color blind humans are also males because in humans, trichromacy is also a sex linked gene. My work here in Duke Lemur Center is to investigate how ruffed lemurs perceive their world. Specifically, who can perceive red and who can't. Please Like and Comment. Tag your friends if you think they like lemurs! Photo by @prancingpapio #dukelemurcenter #lemurs #lemur #lemuria #lemurian #animaltraining #positivereinforcement #primate #primateofinstagram #primates #ruffedlemur #blackandwhiteruffedlemur #varecia #variegata #colsci #color #colorvision #colorscience #psychophysics #psychophysiology #psychology #anthropology #primatology #SMARTA #prancingpapio

A photo posted by Duke Lemur Center (@dukelemurcenter) on Jul 2, 2015 at 8:24am PDT

#butfirstletmetakeaselfie Thanks everyone for following my work and your enthusiasm with these wonderful lemurs. Here's a silly picture of me and Puck. I work with the ruffed lemurs indoors so the picture quality tends to be bad because of lighting. However, that is good for my research because too much light will cause glare on the surface of my apparatus and the lemurs won't be able to see the screen. Photo by @prancingpapio #dukelemurcenter #lemurs #lemur #lemuria #lemurian #animaltraining #positivereinforcement #primate #primateofinstagram #primates #ruffedlemur #redruffedlemur #varecia #variegata #rubra #colsci #color #colorvision #colorscience #psychophysics #psychophysiology #psychology #anthropology #primatology #SMARTA #prancingpapio #selfie #selfies

A photo posted by Duke Lemur Center (@dukelemurcenter) on Jul 2, 2015 at 11:53am PDT

Here's one of the black-and-white lemurs being trained to target a red square on SMARTA. Most of the time, the ruffed lemurs like to sit on their legs with their body erect when working on the apparatus. Imagine a human watching TV, sitting upright on the floor. Sometimes the lemurs would put one of their hand on top of SMARTA. In some rare cases, they do some really cute postures just like this one. Please Like and Comment. Tag your friends if you think they like lemurs! Photo by @prancingpapio #dukelemurcenter #lemurs #lemur #lemuria #lemurian #animaltraining #positivereinforcement #primate #primateofinstagram #primates #ruffedlemur #blackandwhiteruffedlemur #varecia #variegata #colsci #color #colorvision #colorscience #animals #animal #animalcognition #cognition #cognitive #psychophysics #psychophysiology #psychology #anthropology #primatology #SMARTA #prancingpapio

A photo posted by Duke Lemur Center (@dukelemurcenter) on Jul 2, 2015 at 3:24pm PDT

Raymond Vagell - Ruffed Lemurs Color Vision Instagram: July 1st, 2015

Say hi to Halley. Do lemurs perceive the world as we do? Can they perceive colors? If so, what colors do they "see"? What do you think? Part of my research is understanding lemur vision and perception, specifically with the ruffed lemurs (genus Varecia). Photo by @prancingpapio #dukelemurcenter #lemurs #lemur #lemuria #lemurian #animaltraining #positivereinforcement #primate #primateofinstagram #primates #ruffedlemur #blackandwhiteruffedlemur #varecia #variegata #colsci #color #colorvision #colorscience #psychophysics #psychophysiology #psychology #anthropology #primatology #SMARTA #prancingpapio #durm #durham #northcarolina

A photo posted by Duke Lemur Center (@dukelemurcenter) on Jul 1, 2015 at 9:21am PDT

Decisions. Decisions. These ruffed lemurs are trained to target a red square and then given two-choice discrimination tasks. Aptly named, the lemurs have two choices (stimuli) and they have to discriminate one over another (one gives food reward, and the other doesn't). Here, you see Halley doing her two-choice discrimination task and has to make a decision. What do you think? Do you think Halley "gets it"? Do you think she will touch the red square over the gray square? Will there be craisins in the horizon ...? Photo by @prancingpapio #dukelemurcenter #lemurs #lemur #lemuria #lemurian #animaltraining #positivereinforcement #primate #primateofinstagram #primates #ruffedlemur #blackandwhiteruffedlemur #varecia #variegata #colsci #color #colorvision #colorscience #psychophysics #psychophysiology #psychology #anthropology #primatology #SMARTA #prancingpapio

A photo posted by Duke Lemur Center (@dukelemurcenter) on Jul 1, 2015 at 3:16pm PDT

Here's a short clip of Halley doing a two-choice discrimination task. I posted a photo earlier of her contemplating which square to touch. Watch her solve the task. Please Like and Comment below. Tag your friends if you think they like lemurs! Video by @prancingpapio #dukelemurcenter #lemurs #lemur #lemuria #lemurian #animaltraining #positivereinforcement #primate #primateofinstagram #primates #ruffedlemur #blackandwhiteruffedlemur #varecia #variegata #colsci #color #colorvision #colorscience #animals #animal #animalcognition #cognition #cognitive #psychophysics #psychophysiology #psychology #anthropology #primatology #SMARTA #prancingpapio

A video posted by Duke Lemur Center (@dukelemurcenter) on Jul 1, 2015 at 4:52pm PDT