Everyone loves a cute animal video. It started with the cute kitty videos then expanded onto adorable doggy tricks, before expanding once again onto wildlife animals doing things you don’t expect them to. Sloths giving humans hugs, gorillas asking for food, dolphins saving people from sharks, those are just a few examples. But like many viral videos, animal videos have gotten a lot of backlash from people who believe that these animals have been taken with force and are now being held for entertainment. Videos of animals dying because people cared more about taking cool selfies with them started to surface and suddenly what started as a cute, fun thing had turned deadly.

This morning, I was going through my Facebook feed and I came across this video posted by a group called NowThis. NowThis is a digital news company that posts a lot of videos that should be seen by the public because they really help to promote change in communities. This video goes into detail about slow lorises have now become a victim to us humans and the fear that I saw in their eyes prompted me to create this article and to hopefully promote some change as well.

Slow lorises are a group of nocturnal strepsirrhine primates that are primarily found in Southeast Asia and bordering areas. Videos of pet slow lorises are one of the most frequently watched animal-related viral videos on YouTube. There have been two videos of slow lorises that have garnered the most attention: one posted in March of 2011 of a slow loris holding onto a cocktail umbrella which has a whopping view of two million times and a video posted in 2009 of a slow loris being tickled which has been viewed six million times.

And let’s talk about those tickle videos shall we, because to a lot of people it looks like those slow lorises are enjoying them, but in reality, that poor thing is actually scared as hell; they are literally frozen in fear. And newsflash: when a slow loris raises its arms, they’re not cheering with joy, because slow lorises hate being tickled! And they’re actually plotting your death as you go about enjoying yourself. These “adorable little things” have poisonous glands in their elbows, which they can lick and then bite you to spread the venom with.

Here are some more terrible things that happen to them so that we humans can enjoy playing with them:

• Their teeth get pulled out so that they don’t bite people during selfie time.
• They are forced to be awake at odd hours and are sleep deprived due to being nocturnal animals.
• A lot of them are babies when they’re taken away from their mothers and sold as pets.
• They enjoy traveling at night but they can’t because they’re kept in tiny crates and cages.
• They have a specific diet and they’re not definitely not being fed well while in captivity.

There have been people, however, who have felt for these sweet animals and decided to take action. They have helped rescue slow lorises and rehabilitate them before bringing them back to their homes.

So, if you think these animals are cute and deserve to keep being cute and have a life at the same time, then you can help to promote awareness of this issue. The International Animal Rescue has a lot more information on the issue and has details on their current saviors as well. Tickling Is Torture is a campaign that was launched by the IAR in June 2015. Their aim has been to target the viral videos and images that show slow lorises being illegally kept as pets. They’ve also asked people to sign a pledge to not support this illegal pet trade by no longer sharing or liking such videos and images. You can do the same by signing the pledge yourself and sharing the links to your friends and family so that they may do the same. The campaign has been a huge success and they have already received 450,000 pledges since March 2016.

Cuteness should be preserved, not exploited and destroyed.