slow loris - Scientist at Work Blog

Posts tagged with SLOW LORIS

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May 29, 2013

Calls of the Forest

By Mary E. Blair

Mary E. Blair is a postdoctoral researcher in the American Museum of Natural History’s Center for Biodiversity and Conservation, where she coordinates the Enhancing Diversity in Conservation Science Initiative.

April 8, 2013

At 5:30 a.m., after being out from about 1 a.m. surveying for slow lorises in the dark, I was woken up by an eerie, enchanting duet. I realized through bleary eyes and ears that this sound was not my alarm, but rather a pair of serenading gibbons. Gibbons are large primates (or more specifically, small apes) that live in male-female pairs. They sing a duet together every morning, and sometimes after it rains, to let other gibbons know where they are. Luckily for you, I recorded it. It is very hard to sleep with this going on, and actually, I would argue that the Vietnamese forest can be louder than New York City in the morning.

Later that day, after saying goodbye to the gibbons, we left our first slow loris survey site within the confines of Bu Gia Map National Park, and headed back to the park headquarters. We settled in to the official guesthouse — our home base for the last surveys of the trip.

We picked this location for more than just the accommodations. It allows us to survey the habitats along the edge of the park, including cashew tree plantations, mixed bamboo and secondary forest, and regenerating secondary forest.

Slow lorises can be found in a variety of “edge” or human-modified habitats including bamboo forest, agroforest, and tree plantations – not just “pristine” forest. For slow lorises, the ability to find food in a variety of habitats could be a promising sign for their long-term survival; forested habitat continues to be lost to road and dam construction, mining and agricultural expansion, not only in Vietnam but across Southeast Asia. However, being able to survive close to civilization means it is easier for people to hunt them for use in traditional medicines and to capture them as pets.

At the beginning of my journey to Vietnam, I felt elated after spotting my first slow loris in the dark. They are so rare and shy, I thought I might not even see one. But, in fact, our teams have spotted several in the nightly depths of the Vietnamese forest.

As the trip continued, I learned so much more about the complex reasons lorises are threatened with extinction, and why it is so challenging to find out how many are left. This makes of the matter of how to address the threats to their survival all the harder.

I strongly believe that continued integration of museum-based work and fieldwork will greatly help our understanding of the biology of this endangered group of animals, and others that are also rare and difficult to find in the field. But equally important will be multidisciplinary research combining social and natural science to investigate the complexities of the wildlife trade and different cultural values related to slow lorises in Vietnam and throughout Southeast Asia. I am so pleased that during this trip, my first, our team was able to collect some key preliminary information on the population status and cultural uses of slow lorises across Vietnam. Back in New York, I will use this information to design future research, and I can’t wait to come back soon to continue searching for the enigmatic culi (that means loris in Vietnamese).

If you are now hooked on slow lorises and want to know more about what other intrepid loris explorers are doing, visit the Web site of my colleague Dr. Anna Nekaris for lots of useful information. And of course you can check out our center’s Web site or follow me on Twitter (@marye_blair) to hear more about my trips back to Vietnam to search for more lorises.

May 22, 2013

A Forest Denizen at Risk

By Mary E. Blair

April 4, 2013

In the dark quiet of a Vietnamese forest at night, it is easy to feel completely alone. But unfortunately, we are not the only ones going out to look for small, wide-eyed primates in these forests. Although my research team seeks only to study and take photographs of the slow lorises we find, others want to take the animal itself.

Local, regional and international commercial trade in wildlife is one of the most important threats — if not the most important — to the survival of many species in Asia. Indeed, trade in wildlife is the third most profitable illicit industry in the world, behind narcotics and human trafficking.

Primates like slow lorises are especially vulnerable to even low levels of hunting for the trade because of their biology. Unlike rodents and some other mammals, primates generally live longer and have slow reproductive rates. And relatively speaking, they are older when they first reproduce, they spend more time raising young and they have fewer offspring at a time.

It’s a game of numbers — and slow lorises have bad odds to start.

May 20, 2013

Thwarted by Moonlight

By Mary E. Blair

March 28, 2013

The full moon rose above our field site in southern central Vietnam, bathing the trees in a pale glow, and foretelling how few lorises we would find that night.

The activity of many nocturnal mammals, and especially prey species, is affected by the intensity of the moonlight. In most cases, their activity decreases on nights when the moon is especially bright. This is likely because bright moonlight may increase the vulnerability of these animals to predators. There are a few nocturnal mammals that actually increase their activity on bright nights – like spectral tarsiers and some galagos – presumably because bright nights may increase their success in foraging for insects and ripe fruits.

But it seems that lorises are, sadly, in the majority; a slow loris research team working in Cambodia recently found that moonlight and temperature interact to influence pygmy slow loris activity. On very dark nights, the lorises were always active – but on nights with bright moonlight, animals were only active when the temperature was also high. This pattern is related to the cryptic antipredator behaviors of lorises: in order to avoid their predators, including civets, pythons, predatory birds and monitor lizards, lorises may be even more eager to avoid detection on bright nights when they are more likely to be seen by sets of eyes with hungry jaws attached.

On cold nights we would also expect less activity because of the increased risk of heat loss. During our surveys in here in southern central Vietnam, the temperature has been quite cool, and the moon has been very bright. Result? No slow loris sightings.

It also did not help that we simply did not have much time to survey here, mostly because getting here was so hard.

May 1, 2013

Telling Eyes in the Dark

By Mary E. Blair

Mary E. Blair is a postdoctoral researcher at the American Museum of Natural History’s Center for Biodiversity and Conservation, where she coordinates the Enhancing Diversity in Conservation Science Initiative.

March 20, 2013

Two bright red-orange eyes stared back at me in the dark. I hooted, “Hoo! Hoo!”— our signal for a positive sighting. I wiggled my headlamp to keep the animal’s attention and prevent it from turning away. We didn’t want to lose this one in the dark. The bright halogen beam swept into my own, as my team members that night, Dao Van Cau, Minh Le, and Nguyen Van Thanh, found the animal. I slowly lifted my binoculars up to my face. I was staring at a beautiful pygmy slow loris (Nycticebus pygmaeus). I could identify it as a pygmy loris based on its size — pygmies are much smaller than Bengal slow lorises — and by its tawny fur and the reddish brown stripes that run from its eyes and ears to the crown of its head.

Slow lorises’ eyes, like those of many other nocturnal mammals, are quite large, and they possess a reflective layer behind the retina called the tapetum lucidum. This layer is the source of their bright eyeshine, and it also provides them with superior night vision compared with animals (like humans) that lack this layer. Most of the slow lorises’ primate cousins, including Old World and New World monkeys, great apes, humans, and also tarsiers, have lost the tapetum lucidum, presumably because of a common ancestor that was active during the day rather than at night.

When I first saw this loris — my second sighting on this trip — my heart started pounding and I felt awe, wonder, and joy. I also knew what it meant scientifically: we can now confirm that both species known to occur in Vietnam are present at this site. Perhaps I felt more pride in this loris sighting because I was the first one to see it, or because, unlike before, our team was ready and pulled off a fantastic photo of the animal.

Apr 17, 2013

Waiting for the Dark

By Mary E. Blair

Monday, March 18

At night, we all see things very differently. Our senses shift: Sounds are louder and things that you easily see during the day close in on you. Have you ever driven at night in a secluded, rural area without streetlights? It can feel as if you were driving in a tunnel. You are only aware of the road right in front of you, illuminated by the headlights, and the rest feels like a deep dark ocean of the unknown. Now, picture walking in the dark in a Vietnamese forest where you can see only the tiny area right in front of your feet, illuminated by a flashlight or a headlamp. The forest feels as if it were closing in on you from above, behind, to the left and to the right. Imagine trying to do your work in this dark world.

Granted, I survey wildlife for a living, but this is my first time doing that work at night. I have a lot of experience surveying during the day, and I love to look for frogs and snakes at night for fun. But it is very different when you’re trying to collect data at night. I really took it for granted that the species I studied for my dissertation, the Central American squirrel monkey (Saimiri oerstedii), was a day-walker just like me. Now, the idea of being on the same sleep cycle as my study species seems like such a luxury. But I could not be happier so far on this trip.

We have arrived at the site of our first five-day survey for pygmy and Bengal slow lorises: Na Hang Nature Reserve in Tuyen Quang Province in northern Vietnam. It took us two days just to get here. First, we had an eight-hour drive from Hanoi to Na Hang Village, broken up by a quick breakfast stop — pho, the soupy staple of Vietnam — and then a coffee break in Tuyen Quang City, the provincial capital.

Apr 12, 2013

In Search of Slow Lorises

By Mary E. Blair

Tuesday, March 12

When I left New York City this morning, it was a rainy, dreary day full of traffic and cars and concrete. What awaits me may be similarly soggy, but the traffic will be in the trees and on the forest floor as I explore the jungles of Vietnam at night.

I am at the beginning of my first expedition to Vietnam as a part of my postdoctoral research for the American Museum of Natural History. This expedition is jointly organized by the museum and the Center for Natural Resources and Environmental Studies at Vietnam National University, Hanoi.

I study primates. And this time, I am searching for the pygmy and Bengal slow lorises.