About the Slender Loris

The Slender Loris is a very confused primate. What makes everything even more confusing, is that the species itself doesn't know that it is confused. Let's see if we can clear up some of the confusion around this wonderful little species.

Photo of a Malabar Slender Loris, captured by wildlife zoologist Smitha Daniel, on the slopes of the Western Ghats in Northern Karnataka, near Sirsi, in December 2012

First and foremost, the animal looks cute. We are yet to see a single person who looks upon photos of this animal (or sees it at night in the forest) and doesn't exclaim about its cuteness. It's also a pleasure to watch the animal move in its characteristic slow gait, with arms and legs that grasp the branch.

Secondly, and very importantly, the Slender Loris is NOT one of the primates that have been made immensely popular by the Madagascar series of films. One could say that they're related, though, since the Slender Loris is a prosimian, just like the Lemurs and Bush Babies that feature in those films.

Moving on to the actual scientific confusion around this wonderful animal... Basically, uptil the late 1990s, the classification of the Slender Loris genus was quite different. We've got a separate page detailing its place in the Animal Kingdom, but basically, the Slender Loris currently represents two distinct species - the Gray Slender Loris (Loris lydekkerianus) and the Red Slender Loris (Loris tardigradus). While the Gray Slender Loris is further subdivided into four subspecies, the Red Slender Loris is further subdivided into two subspecies. Of these six total subspecies of the Slender Loris, only two subspecies of the Gray Slender Loris - the Mysore Slender Loris (Loris l. lydekkerianus) and the Malabar Slender Loris (Loris l. malabaricus) - are found in India. The remaining two subspecies of the Gray Slender Loris, and the two subspecies of the Red Slender Loris are only found in Sri Lanka.

As per the IUCN redlist, the Red Slender Loris is listed as Endangered, while the Gray Slender Loris is listed as Near Threatened. While that may sound good at first, deeper analysis of IUCN's listing of the Gray Slender Loris informs us that this classification is due to insufficient data - and it is a guesstimate, based on how quickly the habitat of the animal has deteriorated in the past decade.

All this brings us to conclude on one thing - we don't know anything much about this wonderful creature. And that's where Smitha Daniel and this blog comes in...

We, the friends and family of Smitha Daniel - a wildlife zoologist, started this blog to increase awareness of the Slender Loris, and its currently pitiable state in this world. If we can get more spotlight and public exposure on this animal, then more research can progress in this field, and the Slender Loris can be ultimately benefitted.

All it takes from you is to follow this blog, share content from this blog to your Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and other mediums, and just get the word out - the Slender Loris is an amazing creature of nature. And it needs our help.