DAVAO CITY—A Philippine slow loris was rescued from a resident in Tawi-Tawi, the Bangsamoro Ministry of Environment, Natural Resources and Energy (Menre) said.
Locally known as “kokam,” the animal was found by a resident in a malnourished condition in barangay Mandulan, in the municipality of Bongao.
It was held captive for a few months before it was rescued, the Menre said.
“The slow loris is now being monitored to determine if it has any diseases or if it is already capable of aclimatizing to its natural diet and habitat,” said Tawi-Tawi First District Community Enre Officer Saido Espiliro.
The Tawi-Tawi Enre Office and the Police Provincial Office in Baywalk, Pahut, Bongao, jointly conducted the rescue.
The Bangsamoro Information Office quoted Emerson Sy, executive director of the Philippine Center for Terrestrial and Aquatic Research, as saying that this was the second time a Philippine slow loris was rescued from captivity in the last decade. The first was in 2019 in the municipality of Simunul, also in Tawi-Tawi province.
The Menre Tawi-Tawi has eyed Bud Kabugan as a release site to ensure the animal’s safety.
The information office said the capture of the slow loris was an opportunity for the Menre “to launch a community-wide ecological awareness campaign to gain the residents’ commitment to not hunt, collect, harm and trade wildlife species.”
The loris belongs to the family of primates known as Lorisidae, which has nine genera and over 25 species, according to the Vietnam-based Endangered Primate Rescue Center (EPRC).
The family includes the loris of Asia and the galagos and pottos of Africa. The eight species of loris currently recognized range across India, Sri Lanka and the Southeast Asia up to southern China, Indonesia, and the Philippines.
The EPRC said that “like every other primate, a loris’s fingers and toes have nails although their second toe has a claw.
This characteristic allows the animal to climb trees skillfully despite their slow movement.
However, it does not prefer to travel on the ground and needs a closed tree canopy for an easy walk.
Loris loves to eat insects and tree sap for which it can forage themselves by drilling holes into tree bark and extract the tree sap with their relatively sharp teeth
In 2015, the International Union for Conservation of Nature classified it as vulnerable due to decreasing population caused by human encroachment into its natural habitat for pet trade.