Page 76 - BBC Wildlife Volume 36 #04

PANGOLIN TONGUES ARE INDEED

THE LONGEST RELATIVE TO
BODY SIZE OF ANY MAMMAL.

In contrast, a cartographer in Guinea reported that
“one finds in the woods an animal with fourfeet” called
d
a quogelo, its scales “like the leaves on an artichoke”. It
n
defended itself by gathering into a ball, protected by iron-
like armour. It was, the cartographer wrote, “not the least
bit naughty or malign” andhelpedkeep pesky insects
at bay. He would rather have liked one as a pet, though
healso reported that they tasted surprisingly good,
despite the “musky” ants they ate. Pangolin tongues aree
indeed the longest relative to body size of any mammal, ,
reaching up to 40cm in the larger species. Very useful
for extracting ants from their nests.
INTERIOR DECOR
In the 17th century, the strange scaly skins of pangolins
arrived in Europe more often than the living animals.
They must have been popular and plentiful, because you
can find them in most of the collection catalogues of
the time. Pangolin skins were one of the trendy items of
early modern Europe: all the cool collectors wanted one,
but nobody quite knew what to do with them.
The pangolins were usuallyjust labelled as “scaly
Indian lizards” and hung on a wall. Perhaps, in an era
when European global power was rapidly expanding
and there were ever-growing piles of new things to
wonder at, an ambiguous object that was so self-evidently
marvellous and at the same time not especially valuable
didn’t merit too much attention.
The unusual skins, and vague descriptions of scaly
exotic beasts in travel journalsand naturalhistories,
did lead to significant confusion, however. There was,
in fact, another type of carapaced beast from the ‘Indies’:
armadillos from the West Indies (now the Caribbean)
were also very popular and easy to preserve for categories did not makethe armadilloand pangolin
collections. Both pangolins and armadillos came from all that difficult to deal with. For this was a time when
Christie’s Images/Bridgeman Images; Wikimedia/Creative Commons; Bridgeman Images (x2); Suzi Eszterhas
distant lands then known as the ‘Indies’ (albeit far apart, the universe was believed to be governedby very
to the west and east of Europe), both were unusually Below: the different rules to our own.
armoured andbothhad elusive, hybrid natures. pangolin has There were many inventive ways to explain things. For
adopted a
defensive, curled example, the 17th-century scholar, Athanasius Kircher,
PANGOLIN OR ARMADILLO? up posture in this argued that armadillos were the hybrid offspring of the
Clockwise from bottom left: André Held/akg-images; Wikimedia/Creative Commons;
Seventeenth-century scholars trying to understand new African carving. tortoise and the hedgehog that had been cooped-up
species that they encountered tended to together on Noah’s Ark.No doubt, had Kircher
use textualdescriptions to guide touched on the pangolin, he’dhave posited
them. Pangolins and armadillos that another, more gamesome hedgehog
were extremely similar on had snuck overboardand had a
paper. The origins of objects passionate fling with a fish.
in collections were also often The armadillos and pangolins
unclear as information was seemed tobea link in thechain of
lost along complicated global nature that many naturalists had
trade routes. In this text- rather expected to exist: a bridge
based culture, which was between furry beasts and scaly
experiencing a tsunami of reptiles and fish. These creatures
novelty from all over the world, played the same role in nature and
there was inevitablygoing to became equivalent in the eyes of
be someconfusion. European naturalists as the lizard-
The factthatthese animals mammals that bridged a big divide
seemed to exist between nature’s in the natural order.
76 BBC Wildlife April 2018