The Little Fireface Project (LFP) team, headed by Professor Anna Nekaris OBE, studies the ecology of slow, slender and pygmy lorises, and contributes to the conservation and ecology of lorisiform species across their range. Our scope of research encompasses behavioural ecology, museum studies, genetics, acoustics, taxonomy, conservation education and chemical ecology.

Slow and pygmy lorises are a unique group of primates found throughout South and Southeast Asia. Their vice-like grip, snake-like movements, shy nature, and most remarkably, their venomous bite, make them unique amongst the primates. They also are, to many people, undeniably adorable, and to others, nature’s answer to over 100 diseases. Their slow movements make them easy prey to expert hunters who literally empty the forests of these shy primates. Slow and pygmy lorises are amongst the most common mammals seen in Asia’s illegal animal markets, yet some of the rarest spotted even in Asia’s best protected forests.

LFP began under the remit of the Nocturnal Primate Research Group at Oxford Brookes University, UK in 1994, and became an independent Project in 2011. Our work covers all lorises, including the African pottos and angwantibos, and Asia’s slender and slow lorises. We have since named seven new species, and have studied six species of loris for a year or more in the wild, contributing novel data on diet, habitat use, social organisation and population status. In 2022 we gained legal status as a charitable foundation in Indonesia (in addition to our charitable status in the UK) under the name Yayasan ENA (Endangered Nocturnal Animal Foundation), which is led by an incredible team of Indonesian conservationists passionate about slow loris conservation.

Little Fireface Project aim to save lorises from extinction through learning more about their ecology and using this information to educate communities and law enforcement officers. leading to empathy and empowerment whereby people in countries where lorises exist will then be motivated to save them for themselves. We do this through education, media, workshops, and classroom programmes. Our research has led to international policy change and has been highlighted in media across the globe, including in the award winning 2012 film “Jungle Gremlins of Java”.