Like hotels everywhere, those in the African nation of Madagascar tout their elegant rooms, lavish buffets, and sparkling swimming pools. But Madagascar’s resorts also lure guests with a furry amenity: lemurs.

Many of these monkey-like animals are endangered, and keeping lemurs without a permit—which very few hotels have—violates Malagasy law.

One hotel has been the subject of multiple complaints to the government for leaving the animals in the sun and for tying them up so tightly that the leashes cut into their skin, says study author Kim Reuter, a conservation biologist in the Nairobi office of the nonprofit Conservation International.

Even if hotels take good care of these pets, they’re exposing them to human diseases. And although habitat destruction is