Forest police from Zhaoqing City, south China’s Guangdong Province, seized 15 lorises and lesser lorises from a bus bound for Shenzhen City, Guangdong.
Being informed of a bus carrying the rare monkeys setting off from Nanning, capital of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, and heading for Shenzhen, police stopped the bus at a local station on National highway 321 inside Zhaoqing City in the early morning of October 28 and confiscated the animals, which were kept in a big leather suitcase, three of which had died.
The remaining 12 monkeys were handed over to a local center for protecting endangered wildlife, said local sources.
The loris has an average body length of 32 to 34.5 cm, with brownish gray hair on its back, and lives in tropical and subtropical forests in Yunnan Province and Guangxi. The lesser loris has an average body length of 20-25 cm and lives in tropical forests in southwestern Yunnan Province.
Both the loris and lesser loris are under top state protection in China.
Local police are still hunting for the criminal suspect who was transporting the rare monkey. The suspect escaped before police searched the bus.
(21dnn.com 11/02/2000)
