Black magic rituals and traditional medicine practices that use body parts of the slender loris continue to thrive in 21st century India and threaten an already imperilled population of this small nocturnal monkey native to the country’s south.

A six-year study has documented for the first time with data and detail the use of slender lorises in black magic rituals, where they are used as effigies to harm enemies, and the use of their body parts in making love potions and traditional medicines.

A team of wildlife researchers and veterinary scientists has observed slender lorises with their eyes or hands burnt or pierced, needle pricks in their hearts, livers or kidneys, and their limbs, spines or fingers broken.

“These are acts of pure horror,” Smitha Gnanaolivu, a wildlife biologist who led the study, told The Telegraph.

Gnanaolivu and her colleagues examined 139 slender lorises brought into rescue and rehabilitation centres in Bangalore over the past 18 years and found that 116 (83 per cent) had some human-inflicted injury – burns, needle pricks or cuts inflicted with knives.

Smitha Gnanaolivu. The Telegraph

Their study was published on Wednesday in the journal People and Nature from the British Ecological Society.

India’s Wildlife Protection Act provides the highest level of protection to slender lorises, the same as that accorded to tigers, rhinos and lions. The International Union for Conservation of Nature has listed slender lorises as “near-threatened”.

The slender lorises – native to southern India and Sri Lanka – are small nocturnal primates, the size of a doll, and are relatively easy to catch because, Gnanaolivu said, “they freeze when threatened”.

Gnanaolivu, who did the study as part of her PhD research at the University of Madras, also conducted informal and open-ended interviews with 293 individuals – government officials, farmers, villagers, wildlife rescuers – familiar with practices involving slender lorises. Those chats took place in Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu.

The researchers combined data from those interviews, observations of the injuries in the 116 slender lorises at rescue centres, and wildlife trade data to document how black magic rituals and superstitious practices threaten the primate.

They found that slender lorises were used alive or dead in traditional medicine as purported cures for poor eyesight, joint pain or leprosy. They also noted references to how loris tears added to kajal or kohl purportedly gave the wearer powers of hypnotism.

In Karnataka, the researchers noted the use of slender lorises as effigies to harm or heal “a targeted person”. The lorises would have their eyes, heart, kidney or limbs pierced or their eyes or limbs burnt or their heads struck by rocks to harm a targeted person, while their elbow or knee joints would be broken to heal a targeted person.

In Kerala, loris fat is used in a concoction intended to heal joint pain. In Tamil Nadu, the researchers have noted, loris liver and eyes are made into a potion meant to cure leprosy or improve poor eyesight.

The study found that black magic rituals appeared to spike during the months of May, June and September, in contrast to online illegal wildlife trade sales that appeared to increase during the last four months of the year.

“We’ve always known such things happen with tiger and rhino parts. But this study documents for the first time practices involving slender lorises with painstakingly collected data,” said Mewa Singh, a senior primatologist at the University of Mysore.

“These are not surprising findings -- people mistreat animals either through prejudices or beliefs,” said Anindita Bhadra, a specialist in free-ranging dog behaviour at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Calcutta, who was not associated with the slender loris study.

The study team included illegal wildlife trade expert Sharath Babu and wildlife veterinary doctor Roopa Satish in India and Anne-Isola Nekaris, Marco Campera and Vincent Nijman from the Oxford Brookes University in the UK.