Southeast Asia Globe’s series on the region’s most endangered animals continues.

An accomplished hunter, the fishing cat, Prionailurus viverrinus, is perhaps the only feline named after what it does. 

This cat spends so much time underwater in pursuit of fish, frogs, lizards and even water birds, which it has been known to seize by the legs, that its ears have evolved into tiny stubs.

The cat attracts fish by lightly tapping the water’s surface with its paw, mimicking insect movements, and then dives in, using its short, flattened tail like a rudder.

Extended claws make perfect fish hooks with which to grab prey, and when it emerges from the water with its ears slicked back to keep them dry, the fishing cat could almost pass for an otter – albeit substantially rarer.

“This small cat must be one of the most poorly known carnivores in the world,” said Dr Hugo Rainey, a technical adviser with the Wildlife Conservation Society in Cambodia. “It has a supposedly huge range, from western India east to Indonesia, but there are few reliable observations and it is therefore classified as endangered.”

Hunted for food and fur, and increasingly starved of their natural habitat, numbers are dwindling at an alarming rate. “Records from the past have proved so unreliable that places such as Laos and Sumatra, where this species was once believed to occur, have since been removed from their distribution,” said Rainey.

“Although in India and Nepal the fishing cat is found at inland sites, surveys in Thailand and Java found that only a very small number of coastal wetlands still contain this species.

In Cambodia the fishing cat is known from one observation at the coast, but unlike in other parts of Southeast Asia, it has been recorded occasionally in the interior of the country around the Tonle Sap, the world’s largest floodplain lake.

Surprisingly, one was photographed by camera trap on the northern plains of the country in Preah Vihear – the only fishing cat observed in the wild in Cambodia. The frequent floods and many waterholes of Preah Vihear may be why this species is found so far from the coast.”

Pygmy slow loris

Deceptively doe-eyed, the pygmy slow loris – Nycticebus pygmaeus – is a solitary night-walking primate which feeds primarily on plant juices, such as gum, and insects, and can fit inside a large coffee cup.

A reflective layer in the back of its very large eyes allows it to navigate safely through the night, but don’t be fooled by its come-hither look. “Lorises have a gland near the elbow which oozes a strong-smelling substance whenever the loris feels threatened,” said Dr Ulrike Streicher of Fauna and Flora International, who in her capacity as a wildlife veterinarian has been studying them in northern Vietnam since 1998 and is considered one of the world’s leading experts (although she modestly insists “that’s easy to say” because there are only about three people in the world who actually specialise in them). “The loris licks this liquid – which, when mixed with saliva, turns toxic.

Because of this, the loris’ fierce defensive bite can induce anaphylactic shock in its victim.”

You might imagine such knowledge would be enough to deter would-be predators, but sadly no, at least not the human variety. Almost wiped out during the extensive burning, clearing and defoliating of forests in Vietnam during the Vietnam War, today the loris – confined to Vietnam, eastern Cambodia, Laos and China – fares little better.

“Despite legal protection, they are heavily hunted for use as pets and traditional medicines. Dried lorises can be found in many markets in Cambodia and live lorises are sold as pets for as little as $10 in Vietnam,” said Streicher.

All lorises, which communicate with each other through whistles and scent-marking, are included in Annex 1 in CITES, the world’s largest conservation agreement, and the international trade is severely restricted but, according to Streicher, “hunting and trade continues and recent surveys show that they have become rare across much of their range and nowadays the species occurs almost nowhere at normal densities any more.

With their slow breeding rate (lorises give birth to one or two infants every two years, always in February or March) and limited ability to cover large distances, it is difficult to see how populations of the loris will ever recover.”