Loris

Lorises[1]
Joseph Smit's Faces of Lorises (1904)
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Primates
Family: Lorisidae
Subfamily: Lorisinae
Gray, 1821
Genera

Loris
Nycticebus

Loris is the common name for the strepsirrhine primates of the subfamily Lorisinae in family Lorisidae. Loris is one genus in this subfamily and includes the slender lorises, while Nycticebus is the genus for the slow lorises.

Lorises are nocturnal. They are found in tropical and woodland forests of India, Sri Lanka, and southeast Asia. Loris locomotion is a slow and cautious climbing form of quadrupedalism. Some lorises are almost entirely insectivorous, while others also include fruits, gums, leaves, and slugs in their diet.[2]

Female lorises practice infant parking, leaving their young infants behind in nests. Before they do this they bathe their young with allergenic saliva that is acquired by licking patches on the insides of their elbows that produce a mild toxin that discourages most predators,[2] though orangutans occasionally eat lorises.[3]

Taxonomic classification

The family Lorisidae is found within the infraorder Lorisiformes with the family Galagidae, the galagos. This infraorder is a sister taxon of Lemuriformes, the lemurs. Within Lorisinae, there are seven species of lorises in two genera.[1]

References

  1. ^ a b Groves, C. (2005). Wilson, D. E., & Reeder, D. M, eds. ed. Mammal Species of the World (3rd ed.). Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. pp. 122-123. OCLC 62265494. ISBN 0-801-88221-4. http://www.bucknell.edu/msw3. 
  2. ^ a b Jurmain et al (2008). Introduction to Physical Anthropology. 
  3. ^ http://www.orangutan.org/orangutan-facts/orangutan-ecology