A sickening underground pet trade has been forged after videos of slow lorises went viral — and it’s driving them to extinction.
They may look like cute real-life Furbys or Ewoks from “Star Wars,” but slow lorises are not meant to be kept as pets, says Oxford Brookes University’s Professor Anna Nekaris.
Millions have watched videos of the Southeast Asian primate being tickled and eating rice balls on YouTube, which the conservation expert says has fuelled a disturbing trend.
“The slow loris became an instant celebrity with over 12 million online views,” she said. “As someone who has dedicated her time to studying this species, you might think that I’d be delighted that the slow loris had become so well-known, so quickly.”
“However, overnight fame for the slow loris has created significant problems as more and more people want to keep the species as a pet. A large number of the people who watched the infamous YouTube clip commented to say that the slow loris is ‘so cute,’ and declared ‘I want one’.”
But researchers at the university found that the lorises in these popular videos were sometimes distressed, sick, or exposed to unnatural conditions.
The wide-eyed cuties may look cuddly, but Nekaris says they are one of the only poisonous mammals in the world — with toxins which can kill humans through anaphylactic shock.
This has led those being poached as pets having their teeth ripped out.
“It is illegal to trade slow lorises as pets, and those that are often have their teeth cruelly ripped out by traders, using either nail clippers, wire cutters or pliers,” she said.
“Although many scientists are trying to educate people about the cruelty of keeping the creature as a pet, it remains an uphill battle.”
Because of its fame, countless numbers of slow lorises are captured each year from their rainforest habitat and sold online, across borders, or to local wildlife markets.
Nobody knows how many lorises are left in the wild, but Nekaris said they are one of the rarest primates on earth.
And conservationists say populations have declined because the pet trade continues to run rampant, National Geographic reported.
Christine Rattel of International Animal Rescue, which runs a slow loris rescue program in Indonesia, told the magazine the mammals are suffering as pets because they are “sensitive, nocturnal, small animals that don’t like to be handled.”
Habitat loss also has taken a toll, as has poaching for traditional Asian medicine, which ascribes therapeutic properties to the animals’ body parts, she said.
Nekaris said that in some parts of Asia it is known as the animal which can cure 100 diseases.
And Rattel told National Geographic that if the ongoing pet trade continues, it would “really push lorises to the brink of extinction.”