Poisonous Primate, Nycticebus coucang

Subject: Poisonous Primate, Nycticebus coucang Thu Jul 17, 2008 8:26 pm

Poisonous Primate, Nycticebus coucang

Looking for info on mangrove snakes, and stumbled upon some info about the toxiicity of slow lorises. Now, for those of you that don't know, slow lorises are a primitive primate native to Africa. They look similar to a potto in appearance. For those of you that don't know what a potto is, it looks sort of like a cross between a small bear and a lemur.

Anyway, apparently slow lorises possess a brachial gland (gland on the arm) that produces a poison in the form of a polypeptide. They may be able to generate the poison from the leaves and fruit in their diet, similar to the way dart frogs generate theirs from the bugs they eat, though lorises mainly eat eggs, bugs, and small vertibrates. The lorises lick the glands and then lick themselves to successfully deter would-be predators. A mother loris will also cover her baby in saliva before leaving it to search for food. The front teeth in the lower jaw of the loris are designed like a comb to distribute the toxin over the fur. There's some believe that the teeth may also act as a capillary system to deliver the poison/saliva mixture into the bodies of enemies when the loris bites. Little studies have been done on the toxixity of loris poison, as they are very hard to find in the wild. The toxin has been known to successfully keep away cats, sun bears, and civets though, and the locals do regard lorises as a poisonous animal. I don't know if any other members of Loridae have poison producing glands other than the slow loris.

Here's a link to let you know what they look like:

http://www.hedweb.com/animimag/slowloris.jpg

Just for sun, here's a slender loris, pygmy loris, and potto, in that order:

http://www.quantum-conservation.org/EEP/slenderloris.gif

http://www.primate.org/images/Pygmylor.jpg

http://www.tohoku-safaripark.co.jp/monki.f...les/saruko6.jpg

Posting Python Number of posts : 1295 Registration date : 2007-12-27

I just had a leaflet sent about them ...people are taking them as pets , a shame as they suffer & get very stressed..didnt mention poison, cute little things.

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