Comments On: IPPL News April 1999 excerpts

IPPL News April 1999 Excepts part 1
ARUN RANGSI IS 20 YEARS OLD!
Arun Rangsi was the first veteran research gibbon to reach IPPL. This year he will celebrate his 20th birthday. No doubt he will get birthday cards from those lovely IPPL members who never miss this special day and whose concern for his well-being we have appreciated so much over the years
Arun Rangsi was born on 9 August 1979 at the Comparative Oncology Laboratory at the University of California at Davis, USA. He was rejected hy his mother at birth and for many months was kept with a swinging wire surrogate (artificial) mother. His lab number HL-98 was tattooed in blue on his abdomen.
In 1981 the laboratory lost the funding for its experiments which involved injecting gibbons with a cancer-causing virus. Most gibbons went to zoos, animal dealers, or other research facilities. However HL-98 was not wanted by any- one in these circles because, according to the laboratory director, he was "mentally retarded" and "metabolically abnormal."
IPPL had a tip-off that the little gibbon might be killed. So we offered funds for his upkeep. A Thai member placed him under the protection of the Lord Buddha and provided him with the lovely Thai name Arun Rangsi, which means "The Rising Sun of Dawn."
The Laboratory director suggested that, instead of us sending him the money, it should be spent on the little gibbon's one-way airline ticket to IPPL! We eagerly took him up on the offer.
The Animal Protection Institute, based in the city of Sacramento which is close to Davis, kindly collected the little gibbon and took him to San Francisco Airport. Arun Rangsi reached IPPL on 9 August 1981, his second birthday.
At that time, US air controllers were on strike. Rather than risk Arun Rangsi being stranded in Atlanta, my friend Kit and I drove to Atlanta Through thunderstorms to get him.
We reached the cargo area as the plane was landing. We asked the cargo agent to phone the pilot to make sure the gibbon was on board. We were told that there was no gibbon on board, but that there was a chimpanzee! The "chimpanzee" turned out to be our gibbon!
Arun Rangsi was extremely small, weighing around four pounds--half what he should have weighed. He banged his head constantly. His medical records showed that he had survived repeated bouts of dysentery and pneumonia. Further, our little gibbon was terrified of people.
What was most striking about Arun Rangsi were his large lustrous eyes, the exquisite white ring around his face and the white "mittens" and "booties" on his hands and feet.
Everyone at IPPL worked very hard to befriend Arun Rangsi. Gradually he stopped his head-banging and learned that we were his friends.
Later he was joined by two other lab gibbons, Helen and Peppy, who came to us from the Laboratory for Experimental Medicine and Surgery in Primates (LEMSIP), New York, and finally by a lovely female gibbon sent to IPPL in 1982 by LEMSIP. We called this long slender gibbon Shanti.
Today, eighteen years later, Arun Rangsi and Shanti live happily together--as do Helen and Peppy.
Brad and Trouble
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IPPL News April 1999 Excepts part 2
THE SLENDER LORIS: A PRIMATE IN DARKNESS by S. Theodore Baskaran
Mr Baskaran has been an IPPL Field Representative for India since 1974
The slender lots Loris tardigradus lydekkerianus, a tiny, furry primate, just 25 cm long, lives only in South India and Sri Lanka. This highly endangered creature lives in arid, thorny forests.
Nocturnal and evolved to hunt insects at night, it has forward looking eyes that are acutely adapted to night vision and legs and forearms that are designed to hold and climb. It could hang upside down and reach its prey. The well developed index finger has a long claw.
There is a sub species which lives in rain forests of South India Loris Slender loris tardigradus malabaricus. Their close relative, the slightly bigger Slow loris Nycticebus coucang is found in North Eastern India. We know very little about the life and habits of the Slender loris. One reason is that it is nocturnal and observation is quite difficult. The other is that traditionally in wildlife studies small creatures are neglected
Much of our knowledge of the Slender loris comes from Germany where a re- searcher, Helga Schluze, has set up a captive breeding centre, with a few lorises she was able to acquire from Sri Lanka. But one thing is certain, there are very few Slender lorises left in the wild.
A few kilometers from the National Highway 45 near Dindigal in the state of Tamilnadu in South India, there is a geographic feature locally referred to as the Gun Hill.
During the eventful times of the Carnatic wars in the beginning of the l9th century, field guns had been positioned on top to guard the road leading to Dindigal where a king had a fort. This hill and the neighboring small ranges are clothed in thorny scrub jungle.
In these forests, a sizable population of Slender loris has been located recently. A chance meeting with a medicine man led primatologist Dr Mewa Singh of Mysore University to this parch of reserved forest. He did a meticulous survey of the area and has started a long term study of the Slender loris and of its habitat.
The main reason for the steep decline in its numbers is of course the loss of its habitat, the scrub jungle. Added to this is the traditional belief in its purported medicinal value. Each part of the vangu, as it is known in Tamil, was credited with some magical property.
Brad and Trouble
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IPPL News April 1999 Excepts part 3
THE SLENDER LORIS: A PRIMATE IN DARKNESS by S. Theodore Baskaran
Mr Baskaran has been an IPPL Field Representative for India since 1974
The variety of slender loris found in Sri Lanka has a mark on its head like the religious symbol namam and so is known as namam thevangu.
The bone of its head, in powder form, was considered a potent aphrodisiac. If the left leg is eaten, it would cure leprosy. The right leg is considered an antidote for persistent cough. If you rub your head with the bones of its spine, then you could carry the ritual fire pot without any difficulty
In every village shandy, you could see the loris man holding a pole with the poor creature crouching on it. He sold colored ropes, touched by the loris, to be worn around the waist of sick children.
The slender loris was also a popular cage animal. Some were caught for experiments in Laboratories. Twenty-five years ago, one could buy a loris for a few rupees in Chennai Moore market or Bangalore Russel market, Since very few knew what its diet was in its natural state and a well-meaning professor of Zoology had written in The Tamil Encyclopedia that it subsisted on bananas and rice, most of them died within a short while in captivity, to be soon replaced by freshly caught animals.
Slender lorises live on insects and re- quire a high amount of calcium to survive. There has been no record of this species ever having bred in captivity. Although it had been declared a rare and endangered creature under schedule 1 of the Wildlife (Protection) Act of 1972, the hapless primate had no chance.
Relentless sly persecuted, its population dwindled even as its life was wrapped in mystery.
Ms. Sindhu Radhakrishna, a Ph.D. student of Dr. Mewa Singh, is now studying the lorises in the forests near Dindigal. She starts work at dusk and goes on till the first light. If you are studying lorises, you have to work with a head lamp, covered with a red filter, so as not to disturb the animal. I visited the site in July 1998 and went with her into the forest one night. Within a few minutes of walking inside the jungle, we spotted the first loris.
You scan the bushes with the bean of this light and two large, perfectly spherical eyes light up like a decorative lamp in a Christmas tree. The luminous eyes can be spotted nearly 25 metres away. 1 watched this loris as he went about the serious business of looking for insects. The second loris we saw was with a young one. The mother "parks" her baby in one of the trees and goes out to feed and returns at day break to join the young one.
The other creatures that share the habitat with the loris are the jackal, the jungle cat and snakes such as Krait and Russel's sand boa. When I roamed that patch of forest in day time, I spotted two short toed eagles, a crow pheasant, and several grey partridges and tree pies.
The forest was clotted with Kudai seetha trees Acasia foniesiana, once so common and now sadly missing from much of its original home. There was barely any undergrowth, though an occasional cactus bush broke the monotony.
This is the kind of forest that would have covered much of the plains of South India a century ago. When these two researchers complete their study, we will know a lot more about this secretive primate than we now know.
Brad and Trouble
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Is IPPL News accessible in the net? Can I subscribe IPPL News? Thanks for your kind attention. My email address can be found below.
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