Update: I know, I know this SUCKS. The elephant shrews are smiling; a friend called them ‘spacemen.’ (?!??!) See that half circle seed pod off the upper right corner? That was a plate thrown at Remi…I wanted to use a similar color scheme, basically the entire background is a still shot from Ratatouille. Smudged. True story. Won’t happen again. Interesting colors. Weird characters. Not fun.
The Horton Plains slender loris (Loris tardigradus nycticeboides) was thought to be extinct between 1939 and 2002 — then it was rediscovered and photographed for the first time. Horton Plains slender lorises are now classified on the IUCN Red List as the rarest and most elusive primate in the world. This leads golden rumped elephant shrews to use the only one born in captivity as a rhino shield.
“The discovery improves our knowledge of this species, but we need to focus our efforts on the conservation and restoration of the remaining montane forest where this species still exists,” conservation biologist Dr. Craig Turner of the Zoological Society of London said in a press release. “Currently this accounts for less than 1 percent of the land area of Sri Lanka.”
Clearing tropical forests for tea plantations in Sri Lanka has forced conservation efforts to focus on protecting what little forest remains in the hope of reversing its desperate plight.