If you happen to have a torch handy, though, and search the canopy for the sound, you might see something light up in the dark – burning pinpoints like cat’s eyes at night. But what cat would be so high up on a tree? Look closely – it is not a cat, but another mammal; a primate, in fact, but not like the monkeys you see in the same forest in the daytime. Those eyes burning bright belong to a small nocturnal primate that is more ancestral than monkeys in our evolutionary history. It is the Slender Loris, primarily found in the forests of southern India and Sri Lanka. In Kannada, they are called kaadu papa.

 

 

So if they are found in forests, how do you find them in the middle of Bangalore city? Well, we know very little about their life in the city so far. What we do know about their social behaviour comes from studies done in a reserved forest and a tiger reserve. They are solitary nocturnal creatures that live in the tree canopy, hunting for bugs to eat at night, and sleeping away the day in some dense tangle of vines. Adult males and females may live in pairs or alone, or females with infants form small groups.So, why are they in this city? Well, lorises were once found in and around Bangalore before it became a big city.  As Bangalore grew over the centuries into a garden city, first the local kings and then British officials who made Bangalore their home and military cantonment planted trees to create an urban forest. A lot of them are exotic, large trees with beautiful flowers or shade trees along the roads. Of course, before the British horticulturists, the local kings and denizens of Bangalore planted Banyan trees and other ficus species, as well as various fruit orchards. For irrigation and drinking water so high on the dry Deccan plateau, the locals also dug and created a network of lakes all along the city and outskirts. Some of these lakes date back several hundred years. In the 20^th century, urban parks and educational institutes contributed further to the urban forest cover with their large forested campuses. Sacred groves around temples, mosques and cemeteries also provided green cover. All of these together created habitats for many species that found niches in those human-made green spaces of urban Bangalore.

 

 

The Slender Loris, a denizen of the scrub-forest land nearby, became a common species in the urban woods. This arboreal canopy-dweller likes a thick canopy for sleeping sites and hiding from predators. The horizontal branches of large, connected trees draped with big vines or thorny plants like Zizyphus, serve as walkways for movement through the canopy. Lorises eat mostly insects, with an occasional bite of fruit or some gum. They found an abundance of food in the urban forest canopy. They quickly adapted to exotic trees and plants such as Eucalyptus or large Gulmohar trees.

 

  An illustration of a Slender Loris with prey.