Page 75 - BBC Wildlife Volume 36 #04
P. 75
PANGOLINS
Below: a European
traveller’s drawing of
a pangolin from the
18th century.
PANGOLINS SEEMED TO FALL BETWEEN know they exist. So many cultures around the world are
familiar with them, but why have these animals remained
THE CRACKS, AND APPEARED TO BE comparatively unknown to us? It’s a question that we need to
answer quickly. Strong public support will be vital in helping
SLIPPERY, AMBIVALENT CREATURES. prevent pangolins from being poached out of existence.
animal called a panggoeling, with an “extremely hard and SCALY ‘HEDGEHOGS’
g
scaly hidethat theChinese and Javanese used to make For hundreds of years, pangolins have both fascinated
armour… and would also eat its sweet flesh”. and confused Europeans. But have their hybrid natures
Pangolins have now been so extensively hunted prevented them from becoming ‘familiar’ exotic creatures,
that all eight species are threatened. Several are but a such as elephants or lions? Pangolins have always been
scale’s breadth away from being lost forever. Pangolin enigmatic beasts, with many guises. Early European
products were comprehensively banned under CITES explorers came across them under many names all over
(the Convention on International TradeinEndangered theworld: lin in Siam (now Thailand); pangoelling in
g
Species of Wild Flora and Fauna) in 2016, but this has China, Sumatra and Java; allegoe in the Malabar region
not slowed the increases in illegalkilling or highly of southern India; and quogelo in Guinea.
organised international trade. These creatures had harlequin natures–abit fish-like,
Pangolins have the dubious honour of being the most somewhat mammalian and definitely reptilian. In Siam in
trafficked mammals on the planet, yet in Europe we barely the 1680s, one French missionary was fascinated by a scaly
“hedgehog” that seemed to bearep tile, but,
confusingly, also bore live young that rode
on the mother’s tail. Femalepa ngolins
have only one baby at a time, w hichhitches
lifts in a way you’d imagine that only
animals in Disney films might d .
These tricky creatures could be very
trouble some or very helpful. In Dutch colonies
in the East Indies (now South-east Asia), p angolins
were seen as pests, undermining stone flo ors and
di
digging under colonial buildings.They w ere called,
g
un
gg
in
appropriately, ‘Devils of Taiwan’ (Taywan sche
Duyvel). A menagerie in Amsterdam in the 1700s
advertised a duyvel on show. But it
was stuffed rather than alive: the
specimen had been k illed due
to its obnoxious habit of
digging throu gh stone.
April 2018 BBCW ildlife 75
