Help save the loris from the illegal pet trade.
Please if you’ve got a moment to spare, check out the link below:
Just watched Natural World : Jungle Gremlins of Java on BBC2, a programme about the slow loris. I’ve loved slender lorises for years, I can’t even remember how I first discovered them, I just remember it was before one in particular became in internet superstar.
They belong to a group of animals which monkeys evolved from and are closely related to bushbabies and lemurs. They also have one feature completely unique in primates: they’re venomous. I remember a bunch of friends refusing to believe me when I told them how slow lorises produce poison from their elbows and lick it into their mouths where it mixes with their saliva for use.
Natural World followed Dr Anna Nekaris as she studied Lorises on the Indonesian island of Java, investigating their venom, their habits in the wild and human impact on loris populations. Towards the end of the show she visited a black market trading in endangered animals and found more than two dozen slow lorises for sale, some being treated awfully.
The loris superstar I mentionned, a privately owned slow loris called Sonia, has had everyone wondering where they can buy one as a pet and has had a disturbing impact on wild loris populations as they’re captured and sold. Seeing how they’re treated was heart-breaking and like so many other primates they live in habitat that’s fast disappearing due to human development of land for living space and farming.
I know is hypocritical to be more concerned for cute animals than others but I just couldn’t stand to see the slow loris - an amazing and unique creature - go extict.
The Natural World Website, complete with link to the loris episode on BBC iPlayer.
The Little Fire Face Project, Anna Nekaris’ work to save the slow loris.
Saw this last night. Absolutely heartbreaking.
mad-as-a-marine-biologist:brain-food: “Socializing with Polar Bears”
Vintage photos dated back to the 70’s in Eastern Russia of people feeding and give polar bears cans of condensed milk. (via)
Feeding wildlife as a general rule is detrimental on many levels, but OH MY GOD, I LOVE condensed milk.
Bengal Tiger and Cubs(Photograph by Michael Nichol)A Bengal tiger called Sita gives her cubs an early morning bath in India’s Bandhavgarh National Park. The ritual helps cement a crucial maternal bond. Over the last hundred years, hunting and forest destruction have reduced tiger populations from hundreds of thousands of animals to perhaps fewer than 4,000.
(Source: earth-song)
Dude, WTF is that… Purple Frog (Nasikabatrachus sahyadrensis)
The purple frog is the sole representative of an ancient lineage of frogs that has been evolving independently for over 130 million years. Its closest relatives are the Seychelles frogs, the ancestors of which were present on the Indo-Madagascan land mass with the purple frog’s predecessors when it broke away from the supercontinent of Gondwana 120 million years ago.
Formally discovered in 2003, the purple frog spends most of the year underground, surfacing only to breed during the monsoon. It was the first new family of frogs to be discovered since 1926. This species is threatened by ongoing forest loss for coffee, cardamom and ginger plantations.
The purple frog spends most of the year underground, surfacing only for about two weeks during the monsoon season in order to mate. It lives 1.3-3.7m below ground and the frog’s reclusive fossorial (digging or burrowing) lifestyle is what caused the species to escape earlier detection by biologists. It comes to the surface for a few weeks a year to breed in temporary and permanent ponds and ditches…
(text/read more: EDGE) (image: ARKive.org)
other posts of interest:
