Bangalore, Feb. 11: For some, keeping their eyes wide open isn't necessarily the best defence.

If it were, the Garden City's slender lorises would have teased and out-stared every potential adversary. Sadly for these little, slow-moving nocturnal primates, that's far from how things have turned out.

First, concrete jungles encroached on their urban habitats as human populations expanded.

But the unkindest cut for the lorises - whose wide-eyed look has contributed to the old-fashioned local saying "Don't stare at me like a loris" - was probably the lack of focus on them in any of the conservation drives of the wildlife department.

The result has been the level of awareness about these animals is low, although lorises are endemic to Karnataka, among other southern states.

Now an ongoing project by a US-based academic originally from Calcutta has revived interest in these animals, which spend most of their lives in trees. The project by Kaberi Kar Gupta, an assistant adjunct professor from California State University, has been encouraging volunteers to go on night treks to spot slender lorises in the city's urban spots.

With no credible data on their numbers, or how many may have survived the onslaught of urbanisation, Kar Gupta and her team of volunteers had to start from scratch.

"To begin with, we are trying to locate habitats that could be home to these animals, though loss of vegetation certainly would've affected them," said Kar Gupta, who's in the city to get common people involved in the project called Urban Loris Survey at Night.

"They are slow movers but difficult to spot as they are mostly nocturnal foragers who move between large trees," Kar Gupta, who teaches biology, said.

While the bigger denizens of the wild, like elephants and tigers, have hogged all the attention for decades, lorises have been among the worst off among smaller animals, often ending up in "medicinal" concoctions of village quacks.

They have also been hunted down as sacrificial animals in black magic rites. Although wildlife activists insist they often hear stories of lorises being used in rituals in which the animal is either bled or killed, the wildlife department doesn't have any concrete evidence on that.

"We too get information about activists rescuing lorises that bear similar wounds and cuts that indicate their use in some kind of rituals. But we don't have any idea about the actual nature of these practices or where they are held," Ajai Mishra, additional principal chief conservator of forests (wildlife), told The Telegraph on Monday.

Even the population of slender lorises is anybody's guess. "We know Bangalore is a healthy destination for these animals mainly due to the comparatively better tree population in the urban areas. But no census has ever been carried out," Mishra said.

While wildlife activists have often criticised the lack of conservation plans for slender lorises, Mishra says they have always been covered by general initiatives to preserve wildlife.

"There wasn't anything similar to, say, Project Tiger for the slender loris. But every initiative, including Project Tiger, targets wildlife in general. So, that way our conservation projects have indirectly helped slender lorises also," he said.

He credits the large and thickly vegetated campuses of institutes like the IISc and public sector companies like Bharat Heavy Electricals and Indian Telephone Industries for maintaining their tree population that in turn helps birds and animals, including lorises. "That way Bangalore is still among the best urban habitats for these primates," Mishra said.

The forest department is aware of the threat the lorises face from poachers. "As a matter of routine, we keep a watch on threats from poachers or even the general public who might capture these animals to take home as pets," Mishra said.

Individual rescuers, like B.V. Gundappa from Tumkur, some 75km from here, have also been playing a role in saving the slender lorises. Gundappa, vice-principal of a junior college, has so far managed to rescue more than 15 lorises.

"I mostly find them in isolated spots away from their habitation and release them into nearby forests with large trees where they can survive," Gundappa said.

"People sometimes treat them like pets without realising they may not survive if kept away from their habitats," added the teacher who runs a loris awareness campaign for children.

City-based wildlife activist Padma Ashok, a member of Kar Gupta's loris-spotting project, said it has been a worthwhile experience.

"When I started with this project in October (2014), I had very little idea about this animal. But now I know where to find them, what they eat, the threats they are facing and the need to protect them," she said.

"Learning to spot them makes us that more responsible about them."

Lorises can take heart: humans are keeping their eyes wide open for them.