Endangered Loris Terrified at Its Exposed Belly Being Touched, Displays Adorable Defensive Behavior

[Donald_Petersen]

I think my elbows only smell like they have poison glands.

[LDoBe]

Sorry to snap. I’ve been winding myself up here on the BBS since noon PST.

Time for a sanity break. There won’t be much original LDoBe left if I keep mutating unhappily.

[Donald_Petersen]

Didn’t mean to make you snap. We need more of your sensible, sensitive type around here. Don’t let my callous gallows humor get you down.

[pixleshifter]

Sure, when it’s a loris it gets updated from a lemur, but when it’s a leopard?

[LDoBe]

The brachial secretion is very irritating on its own. Apparently the wiki says it’s essentially an allergen with similar properties to cat dander (but stronger, and apparently pretty much all humans have a reaction to it.)

The saliva has some interesting proteins as well, and recently caught specimens appear to have sequestered and possibly modified toxins from food sources as well.

But yes, in order to make their bites particularly painful, they have to mix their secretions with saliva to completely “activate” the whole system. Apparently common predators have mild interest in the brachial secretion alone, while they have universal aversion to the saliva+brachial secretion mixture.