Holy Crap! This Poisonous Primate Thinks It's a Cobra!

I didn't even know this existed, but apparently the Slow Loris from Southern Asia is poisonous! And if that isn't crazy enough, it hisses and has markings that resembles a cobra!

Slow lorises are found mainly in South and Southeast Asia. They create their venom by first licking a gland on the inside of their elbows, which probably makes them one of the few primates who can lick their own elbows (I’ll bet you’re trying it right now). The secretion is mixed with saliva and injected into a victim with a bite by a tooth comb, a set of incisors in the lower jaw whose main purpose is grooming. The venomous bite is extremely painful to humans and can cause scarring and potential death from anaphylactic shock.

When threatened, lorises will hiss, squirm like a snake and put their arms over their heads in a posture that looks like spectacled cobra in strike position. According to a paper published in the Journal of Venomous Animals and Toxins including Tropical Diseases (the scariest publication name ever), this is an evolutionary development.

Slow loris expert Anna Nekaris, the director of Oxford Brookes University’s Little Fireface Project, says in the report that that the cobras and slow lorises lived in the same area eight million years ago. As the rain forests disappeared due to climate changes, the lorises were forced out into the open and onto the ground, where it appears they developed the snake impression to survive.

For the full article, click here.