Prosecutors said Mr. Kasbar put Isaac inside a plastic storage bin with no ventilation holes during the abduction from the zoo, which has been the lemur’s home since 2000.

Wildlife handlers warn that lemurs are not suitable as domesticated animals and that those bred as pets can be highly unpredictable, posing a danger to themselves and their owners. At the Duke Lemur Center in North Carolina, researchers estimate it costs about $8,000 a year to care for an individual lemur. The costs can add up over the lifetime of a ring-tailed lemur, which can live about 30 years, according to the center.

“Typically pet lemurs develop aggressive traits toward people, and they do not know how to socialize with other lemurs,” the lemur center’s website says. “If a pet lemur or other pet primate injures someone, public health officials often require the animal to be euthanized. Nearly always, the animal is the ultimate loser.”

It was unclear how Mr. Kasbar gained access to the zoo overnight, but prosecutors said he had used a pair of bolt cutters to cut through one enclosure that housed six ring-tailed lemurs and another that housed eight capuchin monkeys.

Zoo employees discovered the primates wandering on zoo property the next morning and coaxed them with grapes to return to their enclosures. There was no sign of Isaac, however.

Not long after, the zoo received a call from the police in Newport Beach, saying that they had Isaac, who, like many common household pets, has a microchip embedded in him for identification purposes.

He had been left in the plastic storage bin at the front door of a Marriott hotel with a note saying: “Lemur (with tracker). This belongs to the Santa Ana Zoo it was taken last night please bring it to police.” The hotel is about 11 miles from the zoo.