Each adult lemur eats about 500 g (18 oz) of bamboo per day, which contain about twelve times the lethal dose of cyanide for most other animals of this size.

Females have a gestation period of approximately 138 days and give birth to one infant (occasionally two) at the beginning of the rainy season, in November or December.

[1][4] The golden bamboo lemur was discovered in 1986 by Dr. Patricia Wright and Bernhard Meier,[7] in what is now Ranomafana National Park.

The principal loss of habitat is due to slash-and-burn agriculture or the harvesting of bamboo, for use as a building material as well as for carrying water and basket making.

The species is classified as critically endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and is listed on Appendix I of CITES, CITES (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, also known as the Washington Convention).