Cities are characterised by social and cultural diversity. The management of urban wildlife requires developing a better understanding of cultural beliefs associated with wildlife in diverse urban settings. We document a range of cultural beliefs associated with the slender loris (Loris lydekkerianus), an endemic, nocturnal primate, in the Indian megacity of Bengaluru. Many residents associate the loris with practices such as black magic, and they believe that the animal’s call is a bad omen that brings death and misfortune. Others consider it a harbinger of good luck that offers protection to young children. These superstitious beliefs may motivate illegal wildlife trafficking of the loris. Urbanisation has led to changes in these perceptions, and many respondents now report that they consider these beliefs to be old-fashioned superstitions that hold no place in a modern city. This study contributes to knowledge on changing urban attitudes to wildlife, which is vital to developing conservation strategies that involve local residents.

Due to the heavy-quark symmetry of Non-Relativistic Quantum Chromodynamics (NRQCD), the cross-section for the production of η_c can be predicted. This NRQCD prediction when confronted with data from the LHCb is seen to fail miserably. We address this LHCb η_c anomaly in this paper using a new approach called modified NRQCD, an approach that has been shown to work extremely well for studying J/​ψ, ψ′ and χ_c production at the LHC. We show, in the present paper, that the predictions for η_c production agrees very well with LHCb measurements at the three different values of energy that the experiment has presented data for. Modified NRQCD also explains the intriguing agreement of the LHCb η_c data with the colour-singlet prediction. The remarkable agreement of the theoretical predictions with the LHCb data suggests that modified NRQCD is closer to apprehending the true dynamics of quarkonium production.