Page 74 - BBC Wildlife Volume 36 #04

he Dutch explorer Jan Huyghen van
Linschoten encountered a fabulous and
unusual beast while travelling around India
in the late 16th century. It was a “fish of most
wonderfull and strange forme”, about the
size of a “middle-sized dogge”, and had been
Thauled out of a river in Goa. It ran around
“snorting likea hogge” and was covered in “scales a
thumb’s breadth, harder than iron or steel”. When
attacked, it rolled into a ball and could not be prised
open. Van Linschoten was baffled, though he had
seen plenty of exotic wonders. Particularly when the
creature unfurled itself and scuttled off to safety. What
onEarth was this thing?
Four hundred years later, we can infer that this ‘fish’
was most likely a pangolin. There aren’t any other scaly
dog-like creatures living in India. And certainly no fish
that can take off at a sprint. We can even identify what
species this might have been. Of the eight pangolin
species living in Asia and Africa, only one lives in
southern India. Van Linschoten’s fish-dog-pig was
probably a long-tailed pangolin, Phataginus tetradactyla.

SLIPPERY CREATURES
Of course, the modern method of organising species
according to their evolutionary relationships does not
correspond with the ways naturalists hundreds of years ago Above: a 19th material as in our hair and nails, or rhino horn. Yet, in
organised nature. Naturalists in 16th-century Europe saw century artwork traditional Chinese and Vietnamese medicine they are
depicts the
beasts as symbolic things with places in a naturalhierarchy. still falsely believed to possess all sorts of special powers,
pangolin’s unique
Theyhad moral meanings: many were very clearly ‘good’ scales and its including aphrodisiac properties. They’ve recently even been
or ‘bad’. Pangolins were a little trickier – they seemed to fall ability to climb smuggled to the USA because they contain a substance
between the cracksinthis natural order, and appeared to be trees, using its used to make crystal methamphetamine. The black market
prehensile tail
slippery, ambivalent creatures. is seductively lucrative: a kilo of pangolin meat can be worth
for balance.
This elusive nature may be why even today pangolins are hundreds of dollars, a kilo of scales thousands of dollars.
Clockwise from top:akg-mages; The National Archives of the Netherlands/Creat ve Commons; Pur x Ver ag Vo ker Chr sten/Br dgeman Images
still so unknown. Though we now know far more about
the biology of the animals, mention them to the average FEEDING DESIRE
person and they will most likely give you a blank stare and The high-end restaurants cooking foetal pangolin and
ask if they’re some kind of prehistoric creature. Explain party peopleshooting up on scales didn’t exist in the
that pangolins are animals rather like anteaters with scaly 17th century, but pangolins were used in many similarly
exteriors that can curl up into balls like armadillos, and weird ways back then. In Java in the 1630s, one Dutch
many folk will suspect you’re pulling their legs. physician met a hole-digging animal with a“cold nature”,
Such a low profile is rather surprising. These bizarre covered in carp-like scales. The Javanese apparently called
creatures have been traded for hundreds, if not thousands, this monster taunah (digger in the earth), while Chinese
h
ofyears across Asia and Africa. Pangolins are valued physicians used pangolins to treat all sorts of ailments.
primarily for their meat and uses in traditional medicine. In the 1720s, another Dutchman in Ambon reported an
Their scales are nothing more than keratin, the same

THE PANGOLIN AND ANTEATER

Pangolins are often known predators of termites. They both
as scaly anteaters – for good have very long, sticky tongues,
reason. The pangolins of Africa which emerge from fused tube-
and Asia and the unrelated like jawbones with no teeth.
anteaters of the Americas These are useful for lapping
have independently evolved up insects from their nests,
adaptations to similar ecological which the animals rip open with
roles, a phenomenon called large, hooked fore-claws. Both
convergent evolution. Both pangolins and anteaters have
groups are myrmecophages great senses of smell, but their
(ant-eaters), as well as efficient eyesight is somewhat lacking.

74 BBC Wildlife April 2018