For almost ninety years, the Bangka slow loris existed mostly on paper. Science had last documented the small, big-eyed primate in 1937, and the IUCN Red List carried it as critically endangered and possibly extinct. Now a new study shows the animal never really left. It was simply living on an island where few researchers were looking.
The paper, published this month in the German zoological journal Spixiana, draws on more than a decade of work by the Alobi Wildlife Rescue Center on Bangka, an Indonesian island off the southeastern coast of Sumatra. Between 2015 and August 2025, the rescue team took in more than 90 of the lorises after calls from residents and local authorities, often by phone, WhatsApp or social media. Of those animals, 86 recovered and were released at seven carefully chosen forest sites.
The circumstances of the rescues are a warning in themselves. For 43 animals with detailed records, 16 had wandered into houses or gardens, seven showed burns consistent with contact with power lines, six were picked up from roads and five came from the wildlife trade or captivity. At least three died despite treatment.
“The Bangka slow loris is still alive,” said co-author Timon Glaw of the Haus des Meeres Aqua Terra Zoo in Vienna, which wrote the study together with Alobi and the Taman Safari Prigen Conservation Breeding Ark. Rescues came from all four regencies of the island and the capital Pangkal Pinang, which suggests the species may still be spread across much of Bangka.
That is good news with a catch. Bangka is home to more than a million people, and its forests have been cut back by tin mining and oil palm plantations. The authors want the remaining forest protected, systematic field surveys to estimate how many animals are left, and a conservation breeding programme as a safety net. Re:wild, which had the loris on its list of most wanted lost species, timed the announcement to Lost Species Month in October.
