Fig. 262.—Slow Loris. Nycticebus tardigradus. × ⅓.
The animal has a wide distribution in the East, occurring in Assam and Burmah, the Malay Peninsula, Siam, and Cochin-China, Sumatra, Java, Borneo, and the Philippines. Its vernacular names signify "Bashful Cat" and "Bashful Monkey" in allusion to its nocturnal and shy habits. It lives among trees, which it does not voluntarily leave. Its movements are deliberate, as its popular name, Slow Loris, implies; but it makes up for this by a vigorous tenacity of grasp. The animals "make a curious chattering when angry, and when pleased at night they utter a short though tuneful whistle of one unvaried note, which is thought by Chinese sailors to presage wind." Much superstition has collected round this harmless though rather weird-looking creature. Its influence over human beings is as active when it is dead as when it is alive. "Thus," writes Mr. Stanley Flower,[1] "a Malay may commit a crime he did not premeditate, and then find that an enemy had buried a particular part of a loris under his threshold, which had, unknown to him, compelled him to act to his own disadvantage." The life of the Loris, adds Mr. Flower,
- ↑ Proc. Zool. Soc. 1900, p. 321.
