14 DAY TRIAL // Just last week, Lady Gaga tried to get a slow loris to co-star with her in a new music video. Probably because the thought of becoming worldwide famous did not really appeal to it, the primate declined Lady Gaga's invitation. By biting the artist.
In the aftermath of this incident, Lady Gaga went back on the decision to use the primate in her video, and the slow loris got to go back to business as usual.
What's interesting is that, according to Mongabay, Lady Gaga's getting bitten by the primate, which, by the way, is a venomous one, might actually be good news for the species. Or at least this is what conservationist Anna Nekaris thinks.
In a recent interview with the publication, Anna Nekaris explains that slow lorises are in danger of going extinct sometime in the not so distant future.
This is not chiefly due to habitat or hunting, but because many people have taken a liking to keeping such animals as pets. Consequently, the illegal wildlife trade surrounding this species has pretty much boomed in recent years.
“Slow lorises are one of the most sought after illegal exotic pets,” Anna Nekaris explains.
“As it is extremely difficult to breed them in captivity, these fragile animals are culled from the wild in unsustainable numbers and are kept as pets within Asia as well as shipped illegally around the world,” the conservationist goes on to detail.
By the looks of it, the illegal slow lorises trade came to develop to a considerable extent especially because of YouTube videos showing such primates looking totally adorable.
Thus, these videos are believed to have tricked people into thinking that slow lorises make good pets.
Anna Nekaris goes on to argue that, all things considered, it is likely that the slow loris that Lady Gaga wanted to star in her music video is also a victim of the illegal wildlife trade.
“I am aware of some professional animal handlers either obtaining a slow loris illegally through smuggling or buying a Slow loris from a reputed professional breeder.”
“But again, these animals are so difficult to breed in the wild, the likelihood that was wildborn seems more likely,” she says.
The conservationist thinks that, despite the fact that the slow loris she tried to handle bit her, Lady Gaga could use her popularity to raise awareness of the need to protect these primates.
At the very least, she could step forward and say that, at the time when she was working on the music video, neither she nor her crew had any idea that the primate they were messing with might have been a victim of illegal trading activities.
“Lady Gaga could admit that she had not realized how endangered the slow loris is,” Anna Nekaris says.
Furthermore, “She also might note that she had seen many YouTube videos and had not realized that the animals in those videos were illegal and wildcaught.”