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YouTube: A Curse on the Cute Little Loris?

By bioephemera on March 30, 2011.

Here's Alexis Madrigal on why the slow loris' newfound YouTube fame could be the worst possible thing for the little primates:

Talk about a buzzkill: watching a video of a cute animal on the Internet may -- in some small way -- lead to it being ripped from its mother, abused, and sold on the global market.

I know, I know: most of us can coo over small furry critters with extreme neoteny, while refraining from buying them on the black market. And it's not YouTube's fault that the loris is adorable. It's just truly sad that popularizing an endangered animal most people don't even realize exists, and making them feel affection for it, doesn't produce better conservation but rather prompts people to buy its babies as toys/status objects and pull their teeth out with pliers.

Sometimes we kind of suck as a species. :(

Tags
biology
Film, Video & Music
Science

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