The natural habitat of the Slender Loris, Loris lydekkerianus, a little-known nocturnal primate the size of a small domestic cat, is the dry south Indian deciduous and evergreen forest. It had never been known to occur in Chennai, and so it was astonishing when the animal was spotted quite by chance in Tiruvanmiyur in early 2010.

Loris in Kalakshetra. (Picture by Archana Sai Para.)

A curious-looking furry animal with a rounded head above its greyish tail-less body, thin long limbs and large sad eyes, the Slender Loris (thevangu in Tamil and kaadupapa in Kannada) is generally solitary, sleeping curled up among leafy branches during the day and active during the night, searching for insects, lizards and small fruits that are its diet. If a pedigree cat that kept vanishing and then reappearing caused a stir in a fictitious English village in Enid Blyton’s famous story, Mystery of the Disappearing Cat, this kitten-like animal that has been appearing in unexpected places in our very own city created no less of a sensation.

As far back as 1970, lorises used to be seen in the well-wooded campus of the Madras Christian College (MCC) in Tambaram abutting the Vandalur Reserve Forest. With the city’s relentless spread, these animals disappeared from there. Though Chennai can boast of a ‘tribe’ of many knowledgeable and enthusiastic nature lovers, birdwatchers and photographers who maintain meticulous notes of flora and fauna in the city, there has been no recorded sighting of the animal in the entire area of greater Chennai, not even in the Guindy National Park or in the scrub jungles of Vandalur and Chengalpattu – and certainly not in coastal south Chennai. There was, therefore, much excitement among the naturalist fraternity, combined with complete bafflement, when reports started coming in recently of lorises materialising here and there in bustling urban areas of the city.

The first of these sightings was on a cool February evening last year, when two students of Kalakshetra, Amrita and Archana, were enjoying a free-time stroll in their beautiful green campus after a rigorous day of dance and music lessons. They were amusing themselves taking pictures of plants, insects, birds and other creatures that caught their fancy, when they saw a furry bundle on a low tree. Archana noted in her diary that day, “On first glance, I thought it to be an owl, Amrita thought it was a bat. After a series of guesses we settled on a small monkey. As we watched, the bundle began to separate and we realised that the creature was not one, but two! With large, round, marble-like eyes, they stared at us. And we at them. My next guess was a small lemur.”

She was not far off the mark – they were lorises! To quote M. Krishnan, “Primates are the highest order of the primates, and include some smallish monkey-like creatures, all monkeys and apes, and man. We are, of course, the most highly evolved members of the order, and the monkey-like animals are the lowest and least evolved, and among them are the lemurs and the lorises. There are no lemurs in our country, but there are two lorises, the slender and the slow loris.” Archana took some photographs of these quaint animals and the endearing expression on their faces with her amateur camera, little knowing that she and her friend had just made the first record of a rare and endangered animal, the Slender Loris, in the city of Chennai.

Coincidentally, around the same time, I was invited to Kalakshetra for a talk followed by a slide show of Archana’s photographs. It was an assorted collection of colourful butterflies and beetles, a variety of birds, spiders and small animals that she had come across in the campus. When her picture of the lorises was projected, it was incredulous and I was quite sceptical. After the show, I quizzed her – was she sure this photograph was taken in the campus? Was it a mix-up with some pictures she may have taken in a zoo or in a wildlife sanctuary? But she was certain, and offered to show me the spot where she and her friend had found them. By good fortune, the lorises were still there in the canopy of a low thorny tree and we were delighted to see that one had an infant clinging to its underbelly. They looked down at us with their unmistakable goggle eyes, moving slowly, clasping the fine twigs and branches with their long hands and feet. It was a moment of celebration over an exciting discovery.

Subsequently, Archana and Amrita encountered two more lorises in a shady grove in another part of the campus. When they showed their pictures to other students and staff, they were surprised to find that some of their fellow-students had noticed these creatures off and on during the past few years, but had not taken any particular interest in them. The history of what seems to be an established loris population in Kalakshetra has, therefore, become a puzzle about which we can only speculate. Are they released pets that have managed to survive and breed in the wooded campus surroundings? Could it be that when it became illegal for private citizens to keep wild animals in captivity, the owners released them into the trees in Kalakshetra? Some years ago, it was not unusual to see itinerant soothsayers with pathetically caged or tethered lorises. Could some of these have escaped or been similarly released once wildlife laws became stricter? Or are they wild lorises that have somehow managed to migrate from their natural habitat? Lastly, have they been there all along, but not been noticed on account of their reclusive nocturnal habits?

Shortly thereafter, I was told that there were lorises in the tree-covered garden of a house in Valmiki Nagar in Tiruvanmiyur and in September this year a solitary loris was found on the terrace of a house in Shastri Nagar, Adyar, which was rescued by the Forest Department and later released. All this again posed many more questions. Had these animals adventurously wandered away from Kalakshetra? I wonder how, since there are no natural corridors left in-between the congested urban development. Do these areas too have loris populations of their own? Were these also escapees or released pets? Then, a wildlife enthusiast friend informed me that twenty years ago lorises were common in the garden of a house in Mylapore!

Rescued Shastri Nagar loris. (Picture byTara Gandhi.)

To further investigate the mystery and to gather more facts, in early 2011 the Madras Naturalists’ Society decided to survey the entire Tiruvanmiyur area as well as parts of Adyar, concentrating on large campuses with similar vegetation. I was among the team of members who volunteered to survey the grounds of IIT, CLRI, Olcott Memorial School and Theosophical Society in addition to a more intensive study of the Kalakshetra campus. Since lorises are active only after dark, we set out late at night, between 9 pm and 2 am, armed with torches and forehead lamps covered with red-coloured cellophane (so as not to hurt the animals’ sensitive eyes), cameras and binoculars. After six months of searching, we were no closer to answering any of the questions. Not a single loris was seen or heard anywhere else other than in Kalakshetra, where we found a thriving population of at least 20 lorises.

The lorises’ favoured habitat in Chennai is only about 500 m from the sea. The presence of a legally protected endangered primate species (the Slender Loris belongs to Schedule 1 of the Wildlife Protection Act) so close to the coast has all kinds of implications, particularly with regard to the kinds of development that should be permitted (such as the proposed elevated expressway on the beach, which has thankfully been shelved). All that these harmless animals need is good mixed vegetation of trees and bushes that give them shelter and food, and some darkness at night for their nocturnal vision. Excessive lighting, noise and
atmospheric pollution are a serious threat to this forest species that has shown a remarkable adaptive capacity to survive in our busy metropolis.

We know very little about the Slender Loris in the wild or in human-dominated landscapes. Though they are widespread in southern India and can live with some degree of anthropogenic disturbances, their numbers are going down because their natural forest areas have become fragmented and degraded, forcing them into smaller and smaller pockets of the remaining favourable
habitat. Chennaiites should be proud to host these enigmatic and secretive little primates and should ensure their conservation by making a serious effort to maintain our city’s natural biodiversity in gardens, avenues, parks and in the campuses of institutions that are fortunate to have extensive grounds. The temptation to over-manicure has to be overcome and scrubby, thorny native plants that are considered ‘jungly’ should be spared from the axe. Importantly, the current trend in Chennai to raze buildings and to clear-fell all the trees and plants at the site to build monstrous constructions needs to be reversed. Houseowners with gardens and administrators of public or private campuses, who respect nature by retaining and caring for old shady trees, indigenous shrubs and undergrowth that in turn support extraordinary creatures like the Slender Loris, should be lauded as the environmental heroes of our city.