
[French, possibly from obsolete Dutch loeris, simpleton, from loer, from Old French lourt, from Latin lūridus, pale. See lurid.]
For more information on loris, visit Britannica.com.
| Pottiaghan, Potterspury, Potters Bar | |
| Potton, Poughill, Poughill |
Primitive primate, nocturnal and arboreal, insectivorous and without a tail; very slow moving and related to lemurs. Includes slender loris (Loris tardigradus), slow loris (Nycticebus coucang).
| Lorises[1] | |
|---|---|
| Joseph Smit's Faces of Lorises (1904) | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Mammalia |
| Order: | Primates |
| Family: | Lorisidae |
| Subfamily: | Lorisinae Gray, 1821 |
| Genera | |
Loris is the common name for the strepsirrhine primates of the subfamily Lorisinae in family Lorisidae. Loris is one genus in this subfamily and includes the slender lorises, while Nycticebus is the genus for the slow lorises.
Lorises are nocturnal. They are found in tropical and woodland forests of India, Sri Lanka, and other parts in southeast Asia. Loris locomotion is a slow and cautious climbing form of quadrupedalism. Some lorises are almost entirely insectivorous, while others also include fruits, gums, leaves, and slugs in their diet.[2]
Female lorises practice infant parking, leaving their young infants behind in nests. Before they do this they bathe their young with allergenic saliva that is acquired by licking patches on the insides of their elbows that produce a mild toxin that discourages most predators,[2] though orangutans occasionally eat lorises.[3]
The family Lorisidae is found within the infraorder Lorisiformes with the family Galagidae, the galagos. This infraorder is a sister taxon of Lemuriformes, the lemurs. Within Lorisinae, there are seven species of lorises in two genera.[1]
| Wikispecies has information related to: Loris |
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