GALVESTON - The tiny caramel-colored fuzzballs with huge shoe-button eyes look puzzled, as well they should, this being only their 12th day in this world.

The twins, a male and a female as yet unnamed, are pygmy slow lorises, members of a vulnerable Southeast Asian primate species - a distant cousin of the lemur – and two of only about 50 members of their species in North America.

They, their mother Cai and father Roach, as well as two others, Blackwell and Henderson, comprise the population of pygmy slow lorises at the Moody Gardens Rainforest Pyramid in Galveston.

"Cai is a first-time mom, so we're taking it day by day," says Paula Kolvig, assistant curator at the rainforest exhibit. Cai herself was born here in 2011.

The twins have been carefully lifted off their mother to be weighed and checked for signs of infection or illness. So far, so good. At birth, Kolvig says, they each weighed between 20 and 23 grams, and they've more than doubled that, to about 50 grams, or a little more than 1/10th of a pound. An adult weighs about a pound.

At Moody Gardens, the adult lorises get a controlled diet that includes crickets, but in the wild they eat fruit, tree gum and insects. The exhibit is darkened, a nod to their nocturnal lifestyle.

The International Union for the Conservation of Nature lists the pygmy slow loris as vulnenrable, meaning they have lost 30 percent of their population in three loris generations. They are threatened by loss of their forest habitat and the Asian wildlife market, where they are valued for supposed medicinal uses. "It's not good for lorises in general," says Kolvig.

Population growth is slow because they have long gestation, small litters and long periods between pregnancies.

Shy and elusive in the wild, the animals use their strong limbs and human-like hands and feet to dangle from tree limbs and catch insects.

In an oddity, the slow loris has a toxic bite. It may take secretions from a gland in its arm and mix it with saliva, producing a toxin. Mothers sometimes cover their babies in the toxin to protect them.

The mother and babies will stay in their present exhibit for the time being. Soon enough, the twins will get names. "We're contemplating," says Kolvig. "Maybe Christmas-themed names."