Slow lorises are commonly used in traditional medicine across their geographic range, a practice that has been reported since at least 1900. Thousands of slow lorises are captured each year for such use. Many human factors drive the trade in slow loris parts, including social customs, economic factors, and traditional belief systems.
In Cambodia, the deeply rooted tradition of using the Bengal and pygmy slow lorises in traditional medicine is widespread, and the pygmy slow loris is the most commonly requested animal in traditional medicine shops in Cambodia's capital, Phnom Penh. Some people in the country believe dried slow loris can cure cancer. Slow lorises are also smoked for other traditional remedies. Traditional Khmer medicine practitioners in that region claim that medicines made from slow lorises can cure 100 diseases, with some practitioners from the National Centre for Traditional Medicine reporting that slow loris are sometimes roasted alive under the assumption that this increases the medicine's potency. Slow lorises are also burned alive, causing their eyes to burst and release a liquid called minyak kukang (or loris oil), which is used in black magic and traditional medicine and is supposed to have life-giving qualities and act as a love potion.
In the case of the Bengal slow loris, every part—including the brain, urine, and skin—is used in traditional medicine in order to heal wounds and rheumatism. With the Sunda slow loris, people trade the skin, feet, skeletons, and skulls. The fur is reported to heal wounds, the flesh to cure epilepsy, eyes are used in love potions, and the meat is reported to cure asthma and stomach problems. The pygmy slow loris is primarily valued for the medicinal use of its hair, but it is also used to make bone glue of monkey, a medicine used mostly by local people, but sometimes sold to visitors. In general, wearing slow loris bones is considered good luck and the meat is sometimes thought to cure leprosy.
In ecology, a niche is a term describing the relational position of a species or population in its ecosystem to each other; e.g. a dolphin could potentially be in another ecological niche from one that travels in a different pod if the members of these pods utilize significantly different food resources and foraging methods.A shorthand definition of niche is how an organism makes a living. The ecological niche describes how an organism or population responds to the distribution of resources and competitors (e.g., by growing when resources are abundant, and when predators, parasites and pathogens are scarce) and how it in turn alters those same factors (e.g., limiting access to resources by other organisms, acting as a food source for predators and a consumer of prey).
passage of time
No comments:
Post a Comment