Slow lorises move slowly and deliberately, making little or no noise, and when threatened, they stop moving and remain motionless. The secretion from the arm contains a chemical related to cat allergen, but may be augmented by secondary toxins from the diet in wild individuals. Their toxic bite, once thought to be primarily a deterrent to predators, has been discovered to be primarily used in disputes within the species. The toxin is obtained by licking a sweat gland on their arm, and the secretion is activated by mixing with saliva. Slow lorises have a toxic bite, a trait rare among mammals and unique among the primates.
The hands and feet of slow lorises have several adaptations that give them a pincer-like grip and enable them to grasp branches for long periods of time. Their arms and legs are nearly equal in length, and their torso is long and flexible, allowing them to twist and extend to nearby branches. Slow lorises have a round head, a narrow snout, large eyes, and a variety of distinctive coloration patterns that are species-dependent. Their evolutionary history is uncertain since their fossil record is patchy and molecular clock studies have given inconsistent results. They are less closely related to the remaining lorisoids (the various types of galago), and more distantly to the lemurs of Madagascar. Their next closest relatives are the African lorisids, the pottos, false pottos, and angwantibos. The group's closest relatives are the slender lorises of southern India and Sri Lanka. Although many previous classifications recognized as few as a single all-inclusive species, there are now at least eight that are considered valid: the Sunda slow loris ( N. coucang), Bengal slow loris ( N. bengalensis), pygmy slow loris ( N. pygmaeus), Javan slow loris ( N. javanicus), Philippine slow loris ( N. menagensis), Bangka slow loris ( N. bancanus), Bornean slow loris ( N. borneanus), and Kayan River slow loris ( N. kayan). Found in Southeast Asia and bordering areas, they range from Bangladesh and Northeast India in the west to the Sulu Archipelago in the Philippines in the east, and from Yunnan province in China in the north to the island of Java in the south. Slow lorises are a group of several species of nocturnal strepsirrhine primates that make up the genus Nycticebus. Tardigradus Boddaert 1784: ( preoccupied).Brown = N. bancanus, N. borneanus, N. coucang, N. javanicus, N. kayan & N. menagensis
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