When India Sleeps: A Journey Through the Secret Lives of Its Night-Dwelling Wildlife
7 November 2025
7 November 2025
India’s nights reveal a hidden world where elusive creatures like pangolins and civets roam. It is time for us to uncover their secret lives under the cover of darkness.
Indian pangolins live in the Western Ghats, Odisha’s hills, and central India’s dry forests. They are rare mammals covered in protective scales.
Nocturnal by nature, pangolins use long and sticky tongues to feast on ants and termites. When threatened, they curl into a tight, scaly ball for defence.
Common palm civets roam the forests of the Western Ghats, Northeast India, and Himalayan foothills, often near plantations and villages.
Solitary and nocturnal, civets hunt small mammals, insects, and fruit. Their stealthy movements and keen senses make them masters of the night.
Flying foxes inhabit mangroves of Sundarbans, coastal areas, and urban parks in cities like Mumbai and Bangalore, roosting in noisy colonies.
As night falls, flying foxes take flight, pollinating flowers and spreading seeds, important to maintaining India’s lush and diverse forests.
Owls are found throughout India, from Assam’s dense forests to Punjab’s farmlands, known for their distinctive calls in the dark.
With sharp eyes and silent wings, owls hunt rodents and insects, silently balancing the ecosystem under the moonlight.
Found in the forests of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, the slender loris is a tiny primate with large eyes, moving slowly through the treetops by night.
Silent and secretive, it hunts insects, licks nectar, and climbs with eerie grace, a furtive spirit of the night, rarely seen but always watching.