Cute YouTube video of primate turns into bad news for the endangered species
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There’s this really cute video on YouTube of a slow loris getting tickled. So cute. It just raises its arms up in the air and enjoys a little scratching under its armpits. Not sure how the person in the video has a slow loris sitting around at home. But over six million people have watched this video. Now, an Oxford conservationist is asking YouTube to take the video down because there’s an increasing demand for the slow loris. People want them as pets. From the Independent:
“Poachers steal infant lorises from their parents in the wild to sell at open-air markets in Indonesia, where they are traded for as little as £10. The export market is most lucrative in Japan, where lorises stolen to order sell for £3,500. The trade is now expanding into the US and Europe, with illegally smuggled lorises reported in the United Kingdom. But many do not survive the journey. “The only reason the loris isn’t biting the person holding it in the video is because it has had its teeth ripped out with pliers,” said Chris Shepherd of Traffic Southeast Asia, which campaigns against the trade in primates.”
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