The Roller - part 1

For centuries people have been captivated by the little-known pangolin, an animal so strange that it seems almost reasonable to assume it had magic properties. A mammal with scales. 

     Take a pangolin scale and burn it down to ash. Mix-in seven scorpions and an oyster shell, add musk, linseed oil and wax to form a small rod. Wrap it in cotton and ram it into your ear for "ringing sounds and deafness due to sexual weakness". This was a medical recipe reported by a Western researcher in Shanghai in the 1930s. Cooked in oil, butter and boy's urine, those scales could also help quell hysterical crying in children, and calm women possessed by "devils and ogres," the same researcher noted. Though for me the most convincing description by Professor Bernard Read in Shanghai is that of a piece of scale fixed on to a length of bamboo, forming a nice sensible back scratcher.

     Writing 80 years ago about the species in Hong Kong, biologist G.A.C Herklots reported on Professor Read's findings. He was concerned about the effect of Chinese demand on Hong Kong's pangolin population. The animal was endemic to southern China and yet in the 1930s there were already notable imports from modern-day Malaysia and Indonesia. Though the numbers cited then are enviably low compared to today's industrial slaughter, the colonial government was persuaded to protect the species by law. Herklots noted that it wouldn't be easy to enforce a ban, especially in the wild far reaches of the New Territories.

     Jumping forwards by eight decades, it is remarkable to discover that the elusive animal Herklots called the "most primitive mammal in China", may just about continue to make a quiet living in woodlands across Hong Kong. Shy, nocturnal pangolins were snapped 37 times in the 2002-2006 AFCD camera trap survey across the territory. Its score earned it the status "rare," putting it amongst other esoteric species such as the crab-eating mongoose and the Eurasian otter.

Photo: The Guardian

     Seeing any at all in Hong Kong is surprising for a species under heavy threat all around the region, with an underground trade in flesh and scales larger than anything Herklots could possibly have imagined before modern infrastructure and market developments. They have been cleared from vast tracts of forestry in China, Thailand, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, and they are being pushed further and further away from China through Myanmar, Malaysia and Indonesian Borneo. 

     Yet in Hong Kong the species of clings on. We may even be hosting one of the healthiest populations in the region, according to WWF senior biologist Michael Lau. It isn't easy to encounter the animal directly, but it is relatively easy to find their distinctive burrows, he told me. Occasionally members of the public will hand one in to the care of Kadoorie farm for protection until a controlled release, and sometimes field workers like Lau would come across a dead one in an illegal trap.

     But what are they really?

     Also known as the scaly ant-eater, they have been likened to walking pine cones, or artichoke hearts. It's unlikely that Herklot's "primitive" label would hold up against today's biological definitions, but I'm sure some zoologists wouldn’t object to "freaky". The most striking thing about this small-dog-sized mammal is its scales, covering the length of its body from a narrow cone-head to a long thick tail. It looks like a reptile. One escaped from Prague zoo, swam across the Moldova River, and walked 10 km before being mistaken for a crocodile and shot. A sad fate for a harmless beast with no teeth, though it is possible onlookers were also frightened by its long digging claws.

      The scales are made from the same material that forms human hair -- keratin, but compacted into a hard layer of armour. Bornean warriors used the stuff to make protective clothing and go on the rampage, but pangolins are more passive. Under threat they just roll themselves into a ball, protecting their soft underbelly. The strategy earned the species its name, from the Malayan word “peng-goling” meaning “the roller.” It is probably effective against a leopard cat or an owl, but worse than useless against human poachers who simply pick up the conveniently rolled animal and put it in a bag.

     The hairs that form the scales continue to grow through its life, neatly filed down at the edges by frantic and frequent digging. The ant-eater is a prolific burrower, able to dig down several meters in a few minutes, relying heavily on its long and curved excavator claws. Above ground it balances on the same backpointing nails, to walk in a strange slothful gait, or it uses them as grappling hooks to climb trees. They sleep through the day in underground tunnels, plugging up the entrance to keep out unwanted visitors.  They have beautiful eyes, but they can't see too well, instead relying on a strong sense of smell.

     The pangolin's hidden secret weapon is its extremely long tongue. It is anchored deep down in the body as far back as the pelvis, and when it is not being used it retracts into a sheath inside the chest cavity. On the hunt the Pangolin slithers this sticky organ into deep underground chambers, lapping up ants and termites by the thousands, chasing escapees up all the minor branches. There are keratin spikes inside the stomach, as well as swallowed stones and grit. These work together to grind the insect harvest into a nutritious paste.

   

Photo borrow from the BBC

  It is a paste notoriously difficult to reproduce in captivity. A 3kg pangolin eats three to four hundred grammes of ants or termites per feeding. Few other creatures, including humans, are better designed to find and harvest ants. If you wanted to find ants to feed your pet pangolin, your best strategy would be to have another pangolin to find them for you. This is thought to be one of the reasons the animal is notoriously difficult to keep in captivity. Autopsies show that many die soon after capture from stomach ulcers.

     There are four Asian species that live from India in the west to Taiwan in the east, and south to the bottom of the Indonesian archipelago. All are endangered by the exotic meat and medicine trade, and another four African species have started to be targeted by traffickers in recent yearsforced to widen their search. They have been likened to South American armadillos but the similarities are another case of convergent evolution. In prehistoric times they were more widespread, with fossil finds as far away from today's home bases as Germany and even North America. The species quietly living in Hong Kong is called the Chinese pangolin, manis pentadactyla, and it is clearly in trouble.

     The species has been listed “critically endangered” on the IUCN red list since a reassessment in 2013.  Its population has greatly reduced in the last 20 years. Back in 1996 it was only considered to be at low risk. At that time Malaysia exported thousands of skins to Japan, which were then sent over to Mexico to supply "traditional" leather crafts. Four years later a ban on all international trade was imposed, after conservationists effectively demonstrated the precarious status of wild populations. But the 2000 CITES agreement to stop international trade did nothing to stem contraband for the booming meat and medicine market in mainland China. Vietnam and Korea also remain minor destinations, but all experts point their fingers clearly at China, as by far the most significant grave for the scaly ant-eater.

     A recent study of ten provinces within China suggests that the population there may have crashed by up to 90 percent in just ten years. And in Malaysia, pangolin hunters have told researchers that an explosion in ant and termites shows the huge extent of pangolin loss. The two species that existed for thousands of years in Vietnam are now critically endangered. Elsewhere hunters have reported they no longer actively look for pangolin as it is scarcely worth their efforts since they are so difficult to come by. 

     "We are watching a species just slip away," Chris Shepard of TRAFFIC told the Associated Press. It is a different situation from the animals that humans have nudged out of existence by the unforeseen results of environmental destruction. In this case, even if on paper there is acknowledgment of the need to protect, we are actively hunting the species to the brink. The problem lies in enforcement and stemming the demand. 

     In May 2007 Chinese marine authorities were alerted to a suspicious boat drifting on the open sea.  Fishermen off the coast of Guangdong had noticed a strange smell coming from an unregistered vessel. Coastguards boarded the vessel to find it deserted, an unmanned ghost ship that would have been lifeless had it not been for the menagerie of endangered species it carried. It was packed with leatherback turtles, monitor lizards and Brazilian turtles. 5,000 rare and protected animals in all. Most of them were alive, but some, such as the bear paws, were chopped-up and vacuum packed. Amongst the haul there were 31 live pangolins. Transporting pangolins live is often the cheapest way of keeping the meat fresh, although vacuum packing and freezing makes it easier to carry in bulk.

     The image of that mysterious haul on a drifting ghost-ship is memorable, but as far as pangolin trafficking is concerned it was a miniscule haul. Tens of thousands of pangolins have been intercepted en route to China in just the last few years.  Vietnamese authorities stopped about five tonnes of frozen meat in a single haul the following year, packed into 270 boxes on a ship. It was the year that they captured 23 tons of flesh from about 8,000 animals in a single week. While over in Indonesia officers confiscated 14 tons in Sumatra in just one month. In June 2010 Chinese coastguards boarded another fishing boat off the coast of Guangdong. They found 2,090 frozen pangolins and 2 tonnes of scales. The haul was heading for a market in which the meat could fetch 100 dollars a kilogram, and the scales 700. They arrested 5 Chinese and 1 Malay on the ship. 

     These are the large busts that make the general press, but the constant trickle of interceptions in the past 15 years are piling into a mountain of dead pangolins. Malaysia alone confiscated 30,000 ant-eaters between 2000 and 2007, while Indonesia registered 49,662 in the same period. These are the ones that the authorities stopped and declared. Imagine the numbers that slipped by to keep the trade alive.

     A contraband haul of over 8,000 pangolins in 2013 in 13 countries was estimated to represent 10 to 20 percent of the overall trade. That would suggest a total of 40,000 -- 80,000 pangolins traded that year, according to the Pangolin Project of US anti-animal-trafficking organisation Annamiticus.

     In another indication of scale based on notes seized from traffickers, researchers calculated that around 22,000 pangolins were trafficked from Malaysian Borneo alone in 2009, according to a paper published in Frontiers of Ecology and Environment journal.

     An international network of overlapping crime syndicates maintains the trade in which goods are often transshipped at ocean rendezvous organised by satellite phone.  Records show that Hong Kong with its hidden bays and global connections plays a significant role as transshipment point. Elsewhere they have even been smuggled in exchange for arms, as was the case before Acehnese separatists came to a peace agreement with the Indonesian government in 2005. Word spread among Aceh’s rebel guerrillas that Thai arms dealers were offering up to five Cambodian AK-47s in Phuket for a single pangolin. The guerrillas believed that Thai mafia drank the blood of the animal, but the economics of the trade would suggest that the animals probably ended up in China or Vietnam.