Nycticebus coucang.

It's a mammal! It's a primate! It has a freaky little lemur furby face!

Habitat: rainforests from Bengal to Indochina, southward through the Malay Peninsula and neighboring islands. Lives in the trees, as in, all the time. And they're nocturnal, dammit.

Diet: Snails, insects, fruit, birds, clams, and small mammals.

Life Span: 1214 years.

DESCRIPTION:

Length: 26.5-33.5 cm (10.5 to 13 in).
Weight: 1-1.6 kg (2.2 to 3.5 lbs).
They are small compact animals, with such short tails you can hardly see 'em, short rounded muzzles, round freaky little eyes directed forward, and short, dense fur. They are mainly brown, reddish-brown or gray. They have white lines between their eyes, dark markings around eyes, and a dark dorsal medial stripe in the crown. Hands are broad and feature the ever-popular opposable thumb! The boys look a lot like the girls.

To stay in trees they use their thumbs and big toes. When this animal is annoyed, it twitters like a scolding bird. Each family has one baby.

This sneaky little bastard gets its name from its slow movements, what are the odds. It can creep up on prey without being noticed, and then grab it quickly. Moving slowly also helps it to hide from predators.

When it is sleeping, the slow loris rolls up and almost forms a perfect sphere yay yay yay!

The slow loris has a much better sense of smell than humans, which is not that much of a surprise and can be said about most animals made up of more than a couple of cells.

I saw a documentary on these beasts on the learning channel that convinced me that the slow loris is the finest animal in nature's kingdom.

The footage in question filmed the Loris reaching for a bug on the same branch as itself. It caught the bug after a full three minutes of reaching. It then brought the bug up to its face (this took about two minutes) - and studied the bug for about a minute before popping it into its mouth. As this is happening, I am having a zen-like moment of total understanding with regards to the sheer joy the slow loris must feel at moments like that. The most unlikely hunter at the climax of the hunt.

You could do worse things with your life than picking one thing you like to do and going about it with as much deliberation as this flavour of loris has... my $0.02 anyways...

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