Jungle Gremlins of Java Natural World

SOFT LAUGHTER

Until recently, few of us had even heard of this animal.

Then, one YouTube click went viral...

..and turned it into an internet celebrity.

Its common name, the loris,

comes from an old Dutch word meaning clown.

But its funny face masks a Jekyll and Hyde personality.

For nearly 20 years, one woman has been under its spell.

Some people believe that you have your own spirit animal,

and I feel that I have found mine.

Glimpse by glimpse, Dr Anna Nekaris has been discovering

the surprising truth about nature's real-life gremlins.

What I love about lorises is that they look so cute.

But behind those big, beautiful eyes,

they're hiding this really dark secret.

In the jungles of Indonesia

lives an animal widely believed to possess supernatural powers.

It's a distant cousin of monkeys and apes.

But unlike these more familiar primates,

the slow loris is a creature of the night.

That we know so little about it is hardly surprising.

Few of us care to wander alone in the forest after dark.

Dr Anna Nekaris, however,

hopes to unravel the darkest of all the loris's secrets.

It's something she knows about from painful experience.

About six years ago I got bitten, and it's something I won't forget

because it went straight through my finger and through my thumbnail.

The wound simply wouldn't close. It took weeks to heal,

as if something was blocking the normal healing process.

Very different from a monkey bite or a dog bite.

In fact, the slow loris is the world's only venomous primate.

We do know that villagers in both Burma and Thailand

have actually died from loris bites.

Venom is one of nature's most efficient means of killing.

Yet, in the case of the loris, our cuddly YouTube celebrity,

its purpose remains a mystery.

No biologist has seriously investigated

why a slow loris would need to be venomous.

Anna is embarking on an ambitious long-term research project.

Her destination is the Indonesian island of Java,

where she hopes to solve the riddle of the slow loris's toxin.

But, Anna's interest is more than just academic.

In a world that has less and less room for animals, she needs to know

that here, at least, her beloved gremlins are still safe.

Base for the next few weeks is an animal rescue centre

three hours south of Jakarta.

This place specialises in looking after slow lorises -

in total, around 120 of these critically endangered primates.

Victims of an illegal pet trade,

most of these rehabs are in need of professional care,

and are destined to live out their lives in purpose-built enclosures.

A small handful can be set free,

yet sadly, and for reasons that remain obscure,

many of those that return to the jungle die within a few months.

To get going with her investigation, Anna needs to collect some toxin.

Bromo is a feisty young male.

Anna hopes he will be in a co-operative mood.

Hello. It's all right.

Let's just have a look. You've got good teeth.

Good boy.

I'm going to take a sample from each gland,

then we'll follow that up with taking some saliva with a syringe.

Bromo doesn't look too chuffed.

You can see he's starting to go into his defensive posture.

No, no, no, don't do that. Don't bite me.

He's actually trying to apply poison by doing this.

But it's actually an advantage for us

because maybe he will start producing the brachial oil.

Actually, this is really good.

It is very clear now on the swab.

This is absolutely gorgeous brachial oil.

See the really dark brown colour? We are going to get an excellent sample.

The loris arms itself

by exuding an oily fluid from a gland near its elbow,

and then mixing this with saliva.

It's only when saliva is added that the oil becomes fully toxic.

Clever boy.

That's number one.

So now, I'm collecting the saliva.

All the way back here... Don't bite it too hard.

I think we're done now. You're ready to go.

We've got what we need. You've been a very good boy. Good boy!

Good boy.

While others sleep, over 100 gremlins begin to stir.

They are, without doubt, one of our weirdest relatives.

Not just the world's only venomous primate,

a slow loris also has two tongues.

While the long one laps up nectar,

its hidden partner may be scraping off pollen.

Strange-looking hands appear to be missing a finger.

An arrangement that gives the loris a better grip.

Its back, meanwhile, has several extra vertebrae,

enabling it to twist like a snake.

For 50 million years, these masters of t'ai chi

have been perfecting the art of going unnoticed.

It's taken Anna her whole career

just to uncover the most basic facts about their lives.

White lights really hurt their eyes.

They start doing all the behaviours

that people think are typical of lorises, like being slow.

But they can't see red lights.

Once you use red lights, they start to really become true lorises.

Their behaviour is much more natural. Do you like this?

There you go.

For a long time, it was thought that lorises ate mostly plant foods.

But large forward-facing eyes mark them out as predators.

Anna has found from her own research

that they can indeed be highly carnivorous.

Given the choice to eat something alive, it will take it,

no matter what that living thing is.

As well as bugs, animals as big as bats,

and even birds, are on the menu.

Maybe the toxin is to take out large prey.

Stealth is key.

With its silent approach, the loris is like a deadly ninja.

In the wild, what a loris would do is get a bird sleeping on a branch

and slowly creep up to it,

and just grab it.

Superb night vision

and a fast trigger make the loris a formidable assassin.

They're much crueller than they look, these little lorises.

But, do they really need venom to kill their prey?

If it had toxin to kill prey,

you'd expect maybe that it would be biting it

and paralysing the prey so that it could eat it slowly.

But the second a loris catches its victim,

it tends to just bite its head off.

It seems that these carnivorous little critters

must be using their poison for something else.

Wild lorises are crucial for Anna's research.

The nearest place to look for one

is on the mountain next to the rescue centre.

Anna's student, Richard Moore, is making a routine check

on a loris called Willis.

He's a rehab that was released back into the forest

about two months ago.

Because the Javan slow loris

is one of the world's most critically endangered primates,

every animal that leaves the centre is closely monitored.

Willis may be radio tagged,

but catching up with him isn't going to be a walk in the park.

Mount Salak rises to over 2,000 metres,

and is a magnet for every passing storm.

As night falls, Anna and Richard slog deeper into the forest.

We've got the signal from this direction.

According to textbooks, the loris is slow and rather inactive.

One widely-quoted study has it creeping barely 10 metres a night.

How big do you think his home range is?

About 30 hectares.

The signal is a lot stronger now.

OK.

They're homing in,

but it seems that Willis is just waking up.

The signal's still coming from up there.

The so-called slow loris can move at surprising speed.

Despite the fact they don't jump, doesn't mean they don't move.

They're still fairly active, even in heavy rain.

And it can keep moving all night.

Keep on trekking upwards.

A free-ranging loris is a completely different animal

from one in a cage.

Once they've got lots of branches to move on,

it's this absolutely beautiful smooth locomotion.

Since being out in the wild, he doesn't stop moving.

But this is normal.

They're just going and going and going, sometimes for eight hours.

Until the point comes when you look at your GPS,

and you're really shocked to read that, in a straight line,

the animal has gone eight kilometres or five miles,

and that doesn't include the fact that it's gone up and down, up and down, up and down.

And so these animals are going really far,

and they're going further than macaques, further than gibbons,

because they're relentlessly moving.

It's obvious who's in the driving seat here.

And he's putting his foot down.

I saw it for a second, and then it flashed off.

We had one little glimpse, and we could hear him.

You know what they're like.

You've got them in sight one minute, and then the next, they disappear.

Very elusive.

He clearly can move very quickly and he's running away from us.

Willis is giving them the run-around,

and the terrain isn't getting any easier.

How did you get down there?

RUSTLING

SHE LAUGHS

It's extremely steep, wet, and slippery.

Oh gosh, it's like some sort of jungle assault course!

I'm going to keep moving.

I think he's very close.

After a long chase, Willis finally slows down.

Just enough for Anna to get a decent look.

He's just moved up behind this foliage.

You can see the eye shine just through there.

There he is.

Yeah - oh, I see.

It's amazing, since last night, he's travelled this far.

Out of ten rehabs that the centre has tried to return to the wild,

half have either died or fallen sick.

Knowing why could prove vital for helping the species to recover.

With dawn approaching and the loris getting ready to bed down,

Anna and Richard decide to call time.

THUNDER RUMBLES

Week two, and in a middle class suburb of Jakarta,

an impromptu rescue mission is under way.

Anna has put her research on hold

to help the rescue centre collect an unwanted pet.

While the vet chats to the owner, Anna takes a closer look.

He has really good fur condition, he's not dehydrated, not lethargic.

He's still looking really well.

This is a Sumatran slow loris and it's a male,

and we can see a few strange things in the cage.

You can see some cake, and actually he's taken a few bites of the cake.

The slow loris was once thought to be a single widespread animal,

but thanks to Anna's work,

we now know there are probably 12 different species.

The demand for lorises as pets is still there.

The fact that it's more difficult to get them from Java

means they're sourcing them from Sumatra.

I suppose when they run out of them from Sumatra, they get them from Borneo.

The main reason, it seems, to have a loris as a pet is it's cute.

She says that the loris is cute and then slow, and looks funny.

The main reason to get rid of it is it really stinks.

A lot of people, once they get it as a pet,

they really don't like the smell.

-So she washes him with water and shampoo?

-Mm-hmm.

-And he likes it?

-Does he like it?

-Yes.

-Every Sunday.

-Every Sunday?

-Mm-hmm.

-OK, she washes him regularly because he has a bad smell?

-Yes.

-OK.

I did know someone who had one as a pet

and didn't get a date for three years.

His clothes really stank, and he really stank.

But obviously they're very gorgeous animals -

wide-eyed, adorable fluffballs.

One of the cutest animals in the world for some people.

Anna's hope that this one can be returned to the wild proves to be short-lived.

What you see here is the animal sticking its tongue out,

which is one of the classic signs that its front teeth

have been cut out by the traders in the market.

When they do this, they usually use nail clippers or pliers

and they brutally rip out or cut out the front teeth.

They leave the roots inside.

This mess is up to us to fix in the centre,

for the veterinarian to do a root canal.

But, because his front teeth are missing,

he could never be reintroduced into the wild.

Traders cut out the front teeth

precisely because they fear the animal's venomous bite.

The teeth are clipped.

The canines, which are the fangs upper and lower,

have been clipped as well as all the little teeth on the bottom.

You can hear this growling sound.

That's the sound they make when they're feeling threatened.

You can see the brachial oil is really pouring out here,

so this is a response to being handled.

With the loris getting worked up, it's time to head back to the centre.

Every loris at the rescue centre has a name.

Anna has christened the new arrival Cepat, or "Speedy".

He won't be getting any more cake or shampoo rinses.

But his pristine fur has got Anna thinking

about the purpose of loris toxin.

We never see any ticks or lice or fleas on them.

I think it would be pretty extraordinary

if lorises were somehow producing their own insect repellent.

Anna decides to break out her sample of Bromo's toxin,

and put this idea to the test.

Tonight's guinea pigs are a dozen blood-sucking leeches.

Each about 20 times bigger than a mere tick.

When a leech is being affected by some sort of a toxic compound

like insect repellent, it normally flails around a bit

and then curls up in a little ball and it dies.

To activate the toxin, Anna adds a drop of Bromo's saliva.

And with a good dose applied to her first leech...

..she waits to see what happens.

It's getting very lethargic now.

It's really slowed down now, it's not moving.

It's definitely having an effect.

Ooh! The leech doesn't like that.

I think he's died.

To be certain the result is no fluke,

Anna repeats the test several times.

Eight minutes, dead.

Whatever its mystery ingredient, loris brachial oil is doing the business.

Two minutes, eight seconds. This one is definitely dead.

Its leech-zapping powers are plain to see.

There they are, dead and shrivelled.

Remarkably, even a baby loris can produce brachial oil.

Maybe by coating itself with toxic saliva, a loris is shielding itself

against a whole range of potential parasites.

Yet, if the poison is simply a personal insect repellent,

then why does a loris produce so much of it

whenever it wants to bite?

Could the toxin have more than just one purpose?

Sometimes, scientific discovery lags far behind what local people have known for centuries.

Ancient knowledge is often enshrined in myths and folklore.

And in the hope of finding a useful clue,

Anna is travelling deep into the mountains of West Java.

In every country where lorises are found,

they're either revered, or feared, or people want to use them in some way.

These animals are really mystical creatures.

The Kasepuhan are one of Java's last forest-dwelling cultures.

But it seems no-one has ever asked them

what they know about the slow loris, or kukang.

SHE CHANTS

At the end of a hair-raising trek...

Oh, my God.

..Anna is about to find out.

Mr Koko, a village elder,

is unaware of Anna's special interest in lorises.

THEY SPEAK IN SUNDANESE

Does he have any stories about animals in the forest

that are particularly dangerous?

HE TRANSLATES

ROOSTER CROWS

What causes them more worry?

If they're bitten by a snake or if they're bitten by a kukang?

Few animals are so steeped in superstition as the loris.

Their bones are thought by some to bring bad luck.

And according to one folktale,

a wife can control her husband more easily

if she keeps the skull of a kukang in the water jug.

Some beliefs, however, may contain a germ of truth.

CHIMES RATTLE

Later that night,

the chief of the Kasepuhan told me a story

that reminded me of my own rather nasty experience of being bitten.

He told me that before battle,

it was the custom of his ancestors

to smear their machetes with the blood of a loris.

So that any wounds they inflicted on their enemies would fail to heal.

DRUMBEATS, CHANTING

Could a loris really possess something

that stops wounds from healing?

and where could such a strange poison come from?

In the forest, lorises hunt for a wide variety of insects and spiders.

In fact, they have an unusual ability

to stomach even the nastiest of creepy-crawlies.

They tend to eat really noxious things,

things that are stinky and things that spray.

It doesn't get deterred

by colourful things that indicate these animals are poisonous.

Whatever their poison is for,

it's a fair bet that lorises are getting at least some of it

from their grisly grub.

So far, Anna has barely seen a loris outside a cage.

To understand why they're toxic,

she needs to spend time with them in the wild.

Gunung Gede Forest forms part of a national park

and is a haven for local wildlife.

One of Indonesia's oldest protected areas,

it provides a refuge for the rare Silvery Gibbon.

Long-tailed Macaques also thrive here.

Alongside Ebony Leaf Monkeys...

..Giant Tree Squirrels,

and a host of other animals.

But it's the nightlife that Anna has come for.

Gunung Gede is renowned

as one of the best places in the whole of Java to watch lorises.

Relatively flat terrain and a good network of trails

make it easy for Anna to cover a lot of ground.

What's more, there are plenty of flowering shrubs

to tempt lorises down from the treetops and into view.

INSECTS CHIRP

The night is so much more peaceful.

It's only you and the animals.

DISTANT HOOTING

So many undiscovered possibilities in the jungle at night.

But at this hour, the jungle belongs to the leopard.

GROWL

Something's growling.

SHE SHUDDERS

It's a big animal.

Though she is aware of the danger, Anna decides to press on.

As well as looking for loris eye shine,

she's also listening out for its call.

CHIRPING, CROAKING

WHIRRING CHATTER

It's not terribly loud,

but I know it very well

and I can still pick it up amidst all the other noise at night.

They'd have to be here somewhere.

A pair of eyes glows in the dark.

It's a prowling civet.

In past visits here, Anna has seen dozens of lorises,

sometimes feeding together in small groups.

But tonight, she's drawing a blank.

It's one of the best places in Java to see them.

Everything is right,

there's flowers everywhere and there's tiny fruits

and there are animals around.

I've seen civets and bats,

but not a single loris, not even a single call.

You can normally expect to see six or seven in one night.

And now, searching 12 hours, I haven't seen anything, no lorises

and I'm just exhausted and frustrated.

Has Anna just been unlucky

or are Java's gremlins no longer in the jungle?

In the daytime, I saw all the other primates.

But it really felt like a completely dead forest in terms of lorises.

I don't know where they are.

DISTANT WHOOPING

Back at the centre, Cepat is in the clinic for a check-up.

Around 80% of the lorises that come here

have had their front teeth crudely cut out.

It requires an X-ray

to reveal the full extent of the damage inflicted by the traders.

We can see here, these are the canines.

-There's a small hole.

-Exactly, this is a hole

and this is the area where microorganisms and food

is going to go through and cause infections

-and these infections can be quite dangerous.

-Yes.

An infection can start in the mouth but can affect the whole system

and cause septicaemia and even death.

It looks like poor Cepat is going to need some serious dental surgery.

He's already waking up.

For now, he just wants a good rest.

Anna is back on the hunt for a wild loris.

Having failed to find any in the forest, she's changed tack.

Fields and gardens have replaced most of the trees around here

yet surprisingly, there have been reports of lorises clinging on

in a few remaining clumps of bamboo.

Anna's guide, Mr Ade,

knows exactly where the last gremlins are hiding out.

SPEAKS IN JAVANESE

(We just found our first slow loris.

(He's right in between these two.)

Scarcely ten minutes' walk from a large village,

Anna is surrounded by carrots, cabbages and tea bushes.

This is the last place in Java she expected to see a wild loris.

DISTANT CHANTING

There are about three mosques going off in the background

and it's feeling like a completely

un-loris-like environment.

It's crazy. It's really, really weird.

The next thing I know, there's going to be a loris on the ground,

using its hands to dig up some carrots.

While Anna and Ade strain to see which way it went,

the loris makes an unexpected move.

According to every textbook,

this is a tree-dwelling animal.

But the trees here are far apart.

Perhaps in this unnatural world,

a hungry loris has to take more risks to find food.

(Thought I saw it again.)

I've just seen a pair of eyes in the tree. It's really close.

I could see its eye shine.

With a clear view at last of her cabbage-patch gremlin,

Anna is in for yet another surprise.

He's got a very horrible head wound.

His entire ear is ripped off.

Life is not just tough for this damaged individual.

To Anna, it's beginning to look like the whole species

is struggling to survive.

The really frightening thing is,

this isn't a protected area. It's not a national park.

So they're completely reliant on the people living here to protect them.

If the people don't want them, then that's it.

It's always exciting to see them,

but at the same time,

if this is the only place they have left,

I don't know what the end of the story will be.

Armed with a fresh sample of toxin, Anna returns to her investigation.

Could the poison be strong enough to repel not merely a leech,

but a huge predator?

Sun bears are nocturnal hunters that will eat just about anything.

Their sharp teeth and raking claws would make short work of a loris.

A loris would be very vulnerable to one of these.

They could definitely sniff one out

and just grab it from a tree with their sharp claws and eat it.

But toxin can give smaller, more vulnerable animals protection.

Anna constructs a dummy loris,

first stuffing in leaves from Cepat's cage

to make the basket smell enticing,

then attaching two swabs soaked with loris toxin.

The question is,

can this loris smell-a-like see off a hungry sun bear?

They're going to release the bear.

If you happen to be venomous, it's worth advertising the fact,

especially to something that's about to eat you.

In the dark, and at close range,

smell is one way to get your message across.

And when its nose finds the swab...

Oh.

..the bear beats a retreat.

Oh, she doesn't like that.

Once she hit that cotton swab, she dropped it.

She got really excited, she thought she was getting something to eat.

She was sniffing. Then she stuffed her head in

and the minute she touched the cotton swab, she turned away.

She's going back now for a second sniff.

Ooh! Really didn't like that.

Just had one sniff and walked away.

Still hungry, the bear comes back a third time.

She's going to have one more try. See what she does this time.

So, three times now, she's had a go at the basket.

Clearly, she really doesn't like it.

And now she's not going near it.

Something has put its nose out of joint.

Clearly, the bear got some sort of warning signal that said,

"You must avoid this basket."

I'm really impressed, actually.

In fact, most animals leave lorises well alone.

Perhaps the toxin acts as a double shield,

repelling predators as well as parasites.

The loris, however, has one other enemy.

An enemy which, until now, Anna has overlooked.

Down at the cages tonight,

the usual peace and quiet is being shattered.

CHITTERING

There was actually some fighting in the cage across...

At the moment, or for the past hour, they've been fighting over there.

And these little gremlins fight dirty.

Males compete really furiously for a single female.

They actually will hurl each other out of the trees to get the female.

ANGRY CHITTERING

The staff here have to be careful about who gets put with whom.

If an animal is severely bitten, it can be a death sentence.

SCREECHING

Lorises always just go for the head.

I often see wounds.

They almost are always bald patches with no fur whatsoever,

just a really horrible, horrible scar.

It's as if one loris took a machete to the other

and scalped half its head off.

Tissue death, or necrosis, is a common result.

The wound just festers

and it's often a cause of slow flesh-rotting death.

Maybe the loris has its venom

to battle against other lorises.

Maybe males are fighting males and females are fighting females.

Maybe this venom is to kill another loris, to gain territory.

ANGRY CHITTERING

Maybe the very substance

that stopped Anna's own bite wound from healing,

and which the Kasepuhan believed

would stop the wounds of their enemies from healing,

is a toxin

that rival lorises inject into each other.

Remarkably, recent tests have shown

that loris toxin may in fact contain several chemicals

with the power to dissolve flesh.

Some of these chemicals are even known

to occur in ants and millipedes,

foods that wild lorises relish

but which captive animals rarely see.

It begs the question,

could a rehab, deprived of its natural diet,

eventually lose its toxin?

And could this be why lorises that return to the wild

so often fail to survive?

Without toxin, a loris will be vulnerable

to parasites,

predators

and rivals.

Anna's journey is coming to an end,

but before she heads home,

she has some unfinished business.

While Cepat has the shattered stumps of his front teeth taken out,

Anna forces herself to confront a bigger and more troubling question.

If they're not in the jungle, then where have all the gremlins gone?

Jakarta has several thriving pet markets,

but these are not places for animal lovers

or the fainthearted.

Though there are laws to protect endangered species,

the word on the street is that many are still for sale.

I'm in a back alley,

five minutes from one of Jakarta's most notorious animal markets.

Given that people with cameras trying to film the illegal trade

have been seriously beaten up,

I am a little bit nervous going into this.

If there are any lorises here, Anna is determined

to get photographic evidence.

Rigged with a hidden camera,

she sets off with another member of the film crew.

Together, they'll be posing as a tourist couple

who want to buy an exotic pet.

'The more ignorant we appear,

'the more likely they'll show us the illegal animals.

'I could have bought anything I wanted in this market.

'I could have bought an inflatable fish.

'I could have bought a snake - venomous or non-venomous.'

I can't believe they sell deadly snakes.

'The minute I didn't want to buy something exotic,

'I was offered something domestic.

'The minute I turned my back on something domestic,

'something exotic was offered again.'

CHIRPING AND SQUAWKING

More life in here than in the rainforest.

COCKEREL CROWS

'Walking around a market like that, it's very hot...

'The animals must feel it themselves.

'It's really overpowering.

'The way the animals are treated is shocking.

'Crammed into cages, on top of each other.

'Most of the monkeys we saw in the cages

'should have still been with their mothers.'

The list of endangered species that can be bought here is long.

And not far from the monkeys, Anna spots her first loris.

'When I go in, I just go in as an actress.

'I assume the role of an idiot tourist.'

I got it. Oh, he's so cute.

'..who wants to buy animals, who thinks they're cute and cuddly

'and I'm going to do my best'

not to cry or show any emotions.

'That really helps me to shut out the pain and suffering.

'They were only asking about 25 for the lorises.'

-He's cute! Uh-oh! Uh-oh!

-Uh-oh!

Uh-oh!

'If these lorises make it out of Indonesia to places where

'they're the most popular pets,

'like Japan or Russia, they go for 2,500.'

Calling the cops would be futile.

Around here, there seems to be a blatant disregard for the law.

But perhaps the evidence Anna is collecting

will enable her to rattle some other cages.

'Lorises are now very much protected by Indonesian law.'

The fact that we saw so many lorises in cages was extremely shocking.

So the price for this loris is just a little bit over £20?

I think that's a bit of a discount because she has only one eye.

'They said they would get new ones in every week,

'so the turnover is clearly high.

'In total, we saw 23 lorises from Sumatra, Borneo and Java.

'God knows how many more they've got behind the scenes.

'What you see on the street is the tip of the iceberg.'

CHITTERING

The sheer scale of cruelty is starting to overwhelm Anna.

But the worst is yet to come.

The man took out a box of lorises

and just so cruelly slamming them down and flipping them over.

'I had never experienced that before.

'And these lorises in the box...'

Three of them always looked at me,

like, "please help me get out of this box - we're going to die".

Hello, babies.

This one looks a bit sad.

'They look at you, it's like they look into your soul.'

I want all of them!

'It was that moment, I just... I knew I was going to blow my cover.

'I thought, we've got to get out of here.'

-We need to give it dog food?

-Yeah, dog food.

We could see the suffering in their face.

And that's the image that's still haunting me.

Those animals - all four of them - were only holding onto each other

because they had nothing else in the box to hold onto.

Then they all four at once just turned and looked at you,

you know? It's really awful.

And they kind of looked at you and thought, "oh, God, are you going to save us?"

And, um... You thought, I COULD save you,

I could buy you and take you back to the centre,

and I could maybe release you to the wild,

And they are so gorgeous, so beautiful, that you think...

But we can't buy them.

And anybody that buys them,

there'll just be four more and then THEY'LL die

and there's not many left in the wild.

If there ARE no animals, there is no research.

If we can't save them, we can't know anything about them.

The main reason I went out to Java was to find out

why lorises are venomous and I think I made a really great start.

Some of what I discovered might even be important for helping

the lorises to survive in the wild.

But I've also been really horrified to discover just how bad

the situation is with the pet trade.

The pet trade is the number one threat to lorises in Indonesia.

The local pet trade is bad enough.

But Java's dwindling gremlins could now be facing a new

and even greater danger.

Recently there was a video on YouTube

where a slow loris was being tickled by its owner.

This video has generated more than 12 million hits.

Nearly half of them of people saying, "I want one as a pet".

"It's the cutest thing I've ever seen, where can I get one?"

It's going to be a disaster

if a video like that fuels an illegal international pet trade.

What I want to do is to convert those millions of people who want one

as a pet into millions of people who want to save the slow loris.

Because I'm absolutely determined

that the slow loris is not going to go extinct.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

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