Within 10 minutes, Biju had excitedly leapt off into the tangled vegetation that bordered the forest path. Eanja and Karuthodal lianas twisted and swirled around the forest. Smitha had shone her red light on to the top of the lianas. Some 20 feet above us, there were a pair of eyes reflecting back. The form was barely visible as the brush was thick. "It is a female," declared the loris girl looking up at the girl loris and Biju nodded vigorously. I could barely make out the animal. "The female clitoris is quite long and visible, the male penis is not," I was instructed. I could still only see a huddled shadow, occasionally glinting downwards and then merging with the night. "Let us look for a different animal"; I did not want us to stay too long with one loris and disturb it. Back on the path, mouse deer skittered away again. Was it one animal moving with us, or were there many? I would have thought it was the latter, as they were being seen on both sides of the road. And then lower down another pair of eyes. "Civet," said Smitha. "Brown Palm." Another Western Ghat endemic and like the loris, highly range-restricted. A frugivorous being as compared to the insectivorous loris. Further afield, a porcupine peeped out of the shadows and sedately crossed the path. Within the hour, we had spotted another pair of eyes high up on the lianas. These creepers were possibly the most essential component of the loris habitat. They were almost always found on it, grasping the wood with both hands and feet. I had watched, many moons ago, the Mysore slender loris, a closely related cousin, feed on a grasshopper. There was something serene about the predatory movements of a loris. A calculated, deliberate stretch of a lanky limb and an even slower bringing of the prey to the mouth. A soft crunch and an almost gastronomic delight reflected in its refulgent orbs. But all that was most anthropomorphic. What I had not seen was what Smitha taught me about loris feeding. "It pees on its hands and then waits for ants to crawl on them; perhaps it kills their toxicity." All lorises were known to pee and leave hand and foot prints on the vegetation as scent markers, but Smitha felt that they did that even to express disgust, or like in the case of the ants, while feeding. A fascinating little use of their liquid waste and most unique in the animal world, despite the 'disgust situation' that it would appear to us humans. But to see that or to observe a female loris hang upside down from a liana while the male mated with her right side up were all privileges of those who had spent years watching them up close and personal. For the night walkers of a single moon, a glimpse of the thevangu was enough. Thevangu is slang for a slender-bodied one in Tamil but the Kannada Kaadu-paapa is much more evocative. Forest baby. Round-eyed, round-faced, small-bodied baby of the night forests of the southern Ghats. Malayalis call it Kutti thevangu. Slender-bodied baby, a mixture of both the other names. Any of them has better etymological origins than 'loris', a Dutch derivative of 'clown' or 'simpleton'. "Unda Kannan," said James, "the goggle-eyed one." Not complimentary, but perhaps the most accurate of the four.

wildlife preservation

Return to the Mystical Forest

Forest Baby of the Night

Conservation: the New Killer