Matt's Intro to Lorises

Our new volunteer Matt is having a great time getting to know our lorises.  After only a few weeks of observations he’s already picking up the individual personality of each loris.  See an excerpt from his personal blog below:

Matt and Jennifer in the field.

The last three nights of observation have been amazing.  Each night, I’ve thought to myself wow, I’m so lucky- I’m sure they don’t get this close to the animals every night.  But each night has exceeded my expectations.  It’s just amazing to see these creatures move through the trees right before your eyes.  They seem like little teddy bears climbing through the branches, but with a precision and grace that I never thought possible. They seem to anticipate where every tree and every branch is before they reach it.  More times than once, I found myself thinking that the animal was going to slip and fall 7 meters to the forest floor below, but each time they seemed to know just the right place to grab to steady themselves and keep moving.

Each loris that I’ve observed so far has seemed to have its own distinct personality. Tahini is the most accepting of the presence of humans watching her, and just goes about her business as if nothing is amiss.  She is also a tireless climber who never seems to take breaks.  She travelled over 200m for the few hours we were observing her the other night.  

 

A curious Tahini.

 Ena is a bit older than Tahini, and definitely not as active.  When we watched her the other night, she was just curled up in a ball from 10:30-11:30pm (an hour when lorises are usually very active) just watching the world go by.  Maybe she was just looking out for her daughter, Wingki, who was climbing around 20m away.  

 

Good mother Ena.

 Charlie, who we followed last night, seemed to resent the spectators.  She (yes, Charlie is a girl!) was very alert when the red lights were on her – red parafilm is used over our spotlights so they don’t disturb the animal – and always seemed to be staring at me during the times I was staring at her.  When I turned my lights away from her to write down a data point however, she liked to high tail it out of the area I was in.   

Our girl Charlie.

Finally Mo, who we only observed from about 4:30-5:00am last night, was just getting ready for bed so I didn’t really get a good sense of his personality. There are a total of 10 lorises with the radio collars, 4 of which I have already observed.  I am looking forward to learning the personalities of all the others!