The Pygmy loris(Nycticebus pygmaeus) is a small prosimian living in Vietnam,Laos,eastern Cambodia and the south of part China. In China it is only found in Pingbian,Hekou,Jinping,Luchun of Yunnan Province. As N. pygmaeus is seriously threatened by hunting,trade and habitat destruction,it is listed in AppendixⅡ of CITES,and in 2006 the IUCN classified it as "vulnerable". But the Pygmy loris is nocturnal which creates difficulties to study in the field. In order to understand the characteristics of energy metabolism in N. pygmaeus,the energy intake,digestable energy intake and digestability were estimated by means of feeding trials in Kunming Zoo. The results obtained mainly were as follows:N. pygmaeus intook dry food averaged 9.28±0.48 g per day. Therefore they were estimated to gain 160.94±8.05 kJ/d from food intake,and earn 34.00±7.74 kJ digestable energy intake per day with 82.84±1.98% of the digestability. All these characteristics of energy metabolism in N. pygmaeus of cage are possibly related with their body mass,climate,habitat,and might be considered as the adaptive characteristics to their survival environment in tropical semi-evergreen and secondary forests.
