Jeremy Hance
mongabay.com
July 25, 2013
It
all started with a video: in 2009 a Russian man uploaded a video of
himself tickling his exotic pet (a pygmy slow loris) from Vietnam onto
the hugely popular site YouTube. Since then the video has been viewed
over half a million times. But a new study
in the open source journal in PLoS ONE, finds that such YouTube videos
have helped fuel a cruel, illegal trade that is putting some of the
world's least-known primates at risk of extinction. Lorises are small,
shy, and nocturnal primates that inhabit the forests of tropical Asia,
but the existence of all eight species is currently imperiled by a
booming illegal pet trade that has been aided by videos of lorises being
tickled, holding tiny umbrellas, or doing other seemingly cute (but
wholly unnatural) things.
"In Indonesia
alone, where six species of loris occur, a minimum of 15,000 lorises are
trafficked each year; this does not count the numbers that die before
making it to markets," lead author Anna Nekaris, with Oxford Brookes
University and founder of the slow loris-organization Little Fireface
Project, told mongabay.com. "In Indochina, no figures are available, but
slow lorises have often been the most frequently encountered mammal in
markets. In both regions, however, sellers report declines, saying they
are 'finished' in the wild."
Given the popularity of YouTube
videos showing illegal pet lorises, Nekaris and her team decided to
analyze how people responded to the videos through viewer comments.
Selecting the video of that pygmy slow loris (
Nycticebus pygmaeus)
being tickled in Russia, the researchers made their way through 12,000
comments. Worryingly, they found that around 25 percent of people
expressed a desire for slow loris "pet." Many comments were along the
lines of, "where can I get one?"
This
baby Sumatran slow loris has little chance to survive. Only a few weeks
old, it should live with its mother in the wild for 14 months, but
instead is being sold into the pet trade, doomed to a diet of bananas
and rice. Photo by: The Little Fireface Project.
But even
beyond being illegal—slow lorises are protected in each of their range
countries—the loris trade is problematic for a number of reasons. For
one thing, slow lorises that end up in pet trade are not captive-bred
but taken directly from the wild.
"Slow lorises are impossible to
breed in captivity. The track record of some of the most renowned zoos
shows that the number of slow lorises born in these facilities is way
below what is needed for a self-sustaining population. Indeed several
species have never been bred in captivity," Nekaris explains. "Without a
shadow of a doubt the slow lorises we see in these YouTube videos are
derived directly from the wild and not the result of some
fictitious/magical captive breeding facilities."
In order to
capture a slow loris baby for the trade, poachers must kill the mother
and sometimes whole family groups. In other words, several slow lorises
may die for one pet, and few pet owners realize their purchase is likely
responsible for the death of their "pet's" mother. Further mortalities
occur while the slow loris waits for a buyer.
"Slow lorises are
the world's only venomous primates, so in hopes to keep them from
biting, traders cruelly clip or rip out their teeth with pliers, wire
cutters or nail clippers. This is done in the open street with no
anesthesia, resulting usually in slow painful death due to infection,"
Nekaris says.
This
wild baby Javan slow loris is just as it should be, with a full set of
teeth, and still living with its family group in the wild. Photo by:
Wawan Tarniwan.
This cruel operation also makes it possible to
release confiscated lorises back into the forests, according to
Nekaris, who adds that "the procedure is useless since their deadly
venom can still be administered via their powerful jaws."
Keeping a
loris is also incredibly difficult. Little is known about the animal's
dietary needs even by scientists (for example the slow loris shown in
the tickling video is clinically obese), and few of these pets live
long.
However, the study also found a slight shift in opinions
following the establishment of a Wikipedia page called 'Conservation of
Slow Lorises' in 2011 and the airing of a documentary on the BBC about
the slow loris trade called
the Jungle Gremlins of Java in 2012.
After this, comments expressing a desire to own a pet slow loris dropped
to about 10 percent on the site per month, and those with a
conservation message rose. But the videos are still seen as reinforcing
both the illegal trade and the idea of slow lorises as "cute pets,"
instead of wild and poisonous primates that hugely sensitive to bright
lights and human handling.
Today, all of the world's slow lorises
are listed as either Vulnerable or Endangered by the IUCN Red List, and
the Javan slow lorises is considered among the world's top 25 most
imperiled primates. Lorises are also threatened by deforestation and the
traditional medicine trade, but play hugely important roles in their
ecosystems by pollinating plants and eating insect pests.
Nekaris
told mongabay.com that one of the big problems for slow lorises and
other animals exploited by sites like YouTube is that these social sites
don't allow users to flag animal media as "illegal."
This
Javan slow loris is already severely dehydrated, terrified, and shows
injured hands and horrific fur condition. It is unlikely to make it to
any YouTube video. Photo by: Wawan Tarniwan.
"Currently, no
Web 2.0 site (e.g. Facebook, YouTube) allows viewers to report that
animal material is illegal. Animal cruelty is available on YouTube, but
is vastly different from illegal animal activity that threatens an
entire group of species. If this flagging option were available, YouTube
could then either embed flagged videos with warnings about illegal pet
trade, poaching, medicinal, ivory or fur trade (for example), or ideally
remove the videos altogether, as they would videos portraying illegal
arms, pornography or drug use," Nekaris says.
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