Loris

For other uses, see Loris (disambiguation).
Lorises
Temporal range: Miocene to present
Joseph Smit's Faces of Lorises (1904)
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia
Order: Primates
Suborder: Strepsirrhini
Family: Lorisidae
Subfamily: Lorinae
Gray, 1821[1]
Genera
Synonyms
  • Lorisinae

Loris is the common name for the strepsirrhine primates of the subfamily Lorinae[1] (sometimes spelled Lorisinae[2]) in the family Lorisidae. Loris is one genus in this subfamily and includes the slender lorises, while Nycticebus is the genus containing the slow lorises.

Lorises are nocturnal. They are found in tropical and woodland forests of India, Sri Lanka, and parts of 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.[3]

Female lorises practice infant parking, leaving their 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, which produce a mild toxin that discourages most predators,[3] though orangutans occasionally eat lorises.[4]

Taxonomic classification

The family Lorisidae is found within the infraorder Lemuriformes and superfamily Lorisoidea, along with the family Galagidae, the galagos. This infraorder is a sister taxon of Lemuriformes, the lemurs. Within Lorinae, there are ten species (and several more subspecies) of lorises across two genera:[1]

References

Wikispecies has information related to: Loris
  1. 1 2 3 Groves, C.P. (2005). Wilson, D.E.; Reeder, D.M., eds. Mammal Species of the World: A Taxonomic and Geographic Reference (3rd ed.). Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. pp. 122–123. OCLC 62265494. ISBN 0-801-88221-4.
  2. ↑ Brandon-Jones, D.; Eudey, A. A.; Geissmann, T.; Groves, C. P.; Melnick, D. J.; Morales, J. C.; Shekelle, M.; Stewart, C.-B. (2004). "Asian Primate Classification" (PDF). International Journal of Primatology 25 (1): 100. doi:10.1023/b:ijop.0000014647.18720.32.
  3. 1 2 Jurmain; et al. (2008). "Introduction to Physical Anthropology".
  4. ↑ "Orangutan Ecology | Orangutan Foundation International". Orangutan.org. Retrieved 2014-01-14.
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