Tiny, nocturnal, and expert at remaining hidden, the Bangka slow loris (Nycticebus bancanus) has spent nearly a century evading wildlife biologists around its native habitats on the Indonesian islands of Bangka, Sumatra, and Borneo. Before it vanished in 1937, this big-eyed creature was a member of the world’s only known group of venomous primates—via a bizarre toxin activated when the loris licks a gland on the inside of its upper arm, making its bite more dangerous or its fur poisonous via a little bit of defensive grooming.
But conservationists have finally tracked down the Bangka slow loris, a case of “lost” taxon presumed extinct, thanks to a series of wildlife rescues performed by Indonesia’s Alobi Wildlife Rescue Center between 2015 and 2025. Indonesia is home to multiple species of slow loris, including Sunda (Nycticebus coucang) and Kayan River (Nycticebus kayan) varieties, which may explain how the Bangka slow loris managed to avoid a scientifically confirmed detection across this decade of contact with the rescue center.
As the researchers noted in their new study, published this October in the journal Spixiana, as many as potentially 90 Bangka slow loris specimens were “identified at the species level by the Alobi staff based on fur colouration and the circumstances of the discovery.”
“What I find particularly astonishing is that such a charismatic and distinctive primate has received so little scientific attention for nearly a century,” study coauthor and biodiversity researcher Timon Glaw told Reuters.
Source link
