Slow lorises enjoy an upgrade at rescue center

Slow lorises, the world’s only venomous primate, often fare poorly in captivity. Despite this, they are often captured from the wild and sold to be kept as pets. The illegal pet trade and the use of slow lorises in traditional medicine means we often have slow lorises coming through our care at Phnom Tamao Wildlife Rescue Center. Our animal care staff tries to release the lorises when they can, but injuries and human dependence means some require our long-term care. Lorises are largely insectivorous, but are usually fed on a diet of fruit when people capture them. For many years, we have tried to supplement our captive lorises’ diets by building a grasshopper capture scheme. However, it it does not sufficiently supplement their diets. We recently built a new roofless loris enclosure around some trees and installed solar night lighting to attract insects. Three lorises share the cage and keepers report that they see the lorises catching insects at night and are now eating only around 10% of the food we provide them each day.