Reproduction
A coquerel's sifaka infant peers from the safety of its mother's belly. Click image for larger version.
In the wild, female Coquerel's sifaka give birth to one offspring in mid-summer, after a gestation period of approximately 162 days. Infants cling to their mothers' bellies for the first three to four weeks of life. Then, the young sifaka will begin spending a gradually increasing amount of time riding, jockey style, on mom's back. Infants continue to ride their mother's back, if allowed, during times when they feel threatened until they are five months old. However, by the time the infants are three or four months old, mothers will begin to nip at them to encourage the infants to find an alternate method of transportation! Infants begin to sample solid foods and leaves at three or four weeks, and might begin to take a few tentative steps away from their mothers at this time. Nursing continues, in a steady decline in importance in the infant's diet, until it is weaned at approximately 5 - 6 months of age.
Young become sexually mature at around the age of 3.5 years. At this point at the DLC, they might be removed from their family groups for formation of a new breeding pair.