Threat for lorises and pottos

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Threat for lorises and pottos

Pet and other trade on Asian bird markets

Lorises are regularly offered for sale as pets on the bird markets on Java. Usually these animals die soon from inadequate husbandry conditons, and the next one is bought. Under good conditions, an age of 18 or more years is possible; since lorises

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Lorises in illegal trede regularly get all teeth broken out. This is partly done with plyers on the markets, without anesthesia or subsequent treatment (R. Kess, P. Troni, pers. comm.). As a consequence, the animals are unable to eat or groom their fur properly, they suffer from trauma, pain and severe infections of the wounds in the oral cavity, which often develop into suppurating abscesses destroying the skull bone and opening on the top of muzzle. This way the animals cannot defend when abused as pets, but people buy sick animals which often either die of infections or cause high veterinary costs.
Left: photo: treatment of a confiscated slow loris whose teeth have been ripped out. Photo: H. Schulze. Middle, right: slow lorises showing superficial traces of abscesses on the muzzle. Photos: WildAid / MoE Cambodia, H. Fitch-Snyder.

Click on the image for a larger version See also: Streicher, U.; Schulze, H.; Plesker, R.;Vornefeld, B., 2002: A conservation and health database for
lorises and pottos. Primate report 63: 33-39.

Example for conditions of life as a pet: a cage which was home for an illegally kept pet pygmy loris. Photo: U. Streicher.
In the wild, lorises live in the trees; they have large territories shared with conspecifics of their family group

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Click on the image for a larger version These images were taken in collaboration with research that was being done on the true uses of wildlife in and around the Dzanga-Ndoki National Park. Photographs were taken and the research was done with the agreements among all parties concerned, that the identities of the poachers would not be revealed. Before we can find solutions to problems like the bushmeat crisis, we must first study and try to understand what the the problem really is.

The scar on this mother elephants trunk is most likely from a
cable snare set for smaller animals. Elephants, like all the other
forest animals, often get caught in cable snares. Even if
poachers are not intending to harm elephants or other
protected species, cable snares kill and wound all forest
animals indiscriminately. Snares set on the ground might
particularly be dangerous for the rare angwantibos moving in
lianae and shrub close to and occasionally on the ground.
With kind permission of Haldor Noss, Documentary Photo-
graphy Worldwide. See also: http://www.halnoss.com:
photo gallery including images relating to bushmeat

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