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Important work in loris conservation.

Posted by Shanni on 30 Jul 2013 at 09:29 GMT

An extremely important, and timely, piece of conservation research. I hope that it's able to reach a wide readership, certainly a readership beyond the immediate scientific community, so that people en masse may see for themselves just how damaging videos that are often considered 'cute' and 'funny' may often be. The keeping of animals so unsuited to captive conditions as pets is animal abuse; not overt animal abuse, maybe, and one would hope that it's at least unwitting, but nevertheless, it's abuse nonetheless; yet videos of this kind are disseminated frequently, all the time fueling the trade (if four million watch a video, it only takes a tiny minority who then desire such an animal to have the wherewithal and determination to get one for the awful trade in these, and other, creatures to be perpetuated). Hopefully this important work will go some way to putting right some of the damage caused by the unthinking individuals who try to keep endangered, hopelessly unsuited, animals as pets and upload images of them onto the internet.

No competing interests declared.