Slow Loris - in Culture

In Culture

Beliefs about slow lorises and their use in traditional practices are deep-rooted and go back at least 300 years, if not earlier based on oral traditions. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it was reported that the people from the interior of Borneo believed that slow lorises were the gatekeepers for the heavens and that each person had a personal slow loris waiting for them in the afterlife. More often, however, slow lorises are used in traditional medicine or to ward off evil. The following passage from an early textbook about primates is indicative of the superstitions associated with slow lorises:

Many strange powers are attributed to this animal by the natives of the countries it inhabits; there is hardly an event in life to man, woman or child, or even domestic animals, that may not be influenced for better or worse by the Slow Loris, alive or dead, or by any separate part of it, and apparently one cannot usually tell at the time, that one is under supernatural power. Thus a Malay may commit a crime he did not premeditate, and then find that an enemy had buried a particular part of a Loris under his threshold, which had, unknown to him, compelled him to act to his own disadvantage. ... life is not a happy one, for it is continually seeing ghosts; that is why it hides its face in its hands.

In the Mondulkiri Province of Cambodia, hunters believe that lorises can heal their own broken bones immediately after falling from a branch so that they can climb back up the tree. They also believe that slow lorises have medicinal powers because they require more than one hit with a stick to die. In the province of North Sumatra, the slow loris is thought to bring good luck if it is buried under a house or a road. In the same province, slow loris body parts were used to place curses on enemies. In Java, it was thought that putting a piece of its skull in a water jug would make a husband more docile and submissive, just like a slow loris in the daytime. More recently, researchers have documented the belief that the consumption of loris meat was an aphrodisiac that improves "male power". The gall bladder of the Bengal slow loris has historically been used to make ink for tattoos by the village elders in Pursat and Koh Kong Provinces of Cambodia. Loris wine is a traditional Cambodian medicine supposed to alleviate the pain of childbirth, made from a mixture of loris bodies and rice wine.