Hey Poachers! Knock it off!

Who knows what a pangolin is? Buehler? Buehler? Buehler?

OK, he’s not here.

If you watched a recent episode of “Nature” on PBS, you’ll know the answer. It’s the only mammal with scales. It lives, as different species, in Africa, India, and Southeast Asia. Also known as the Scaly Anteater (Manis penta-dactyla dalmanni), the Pangolin is a shy pleasant creature, it says here, that spends its days foraging for ants; some species do that in the earth, others in trees depending where you find your ants in your area. Sounds to me like a good animal to have around.

Nonetheless, just like nearly every other story about animal extinction says “Animal X is being pushed to the edge of extinction because it’s being poached for its Y. Chinese people believe that their use of Y will result in Z.”

“Use of rhino horn as an aphrodisiac in Asian traditional medicine has long been debunked as a denigrating, unjust characterization of the trade by Western media. ... To be clear, rhino horn has historically been used as a traditional medicinal ingredient in countries such as China and Vietnam,” it says in Scientific American. OK, so what is it used for? In Traditional Chinese Medicine, the horn, which is shaved or ground into a powder and dissolved in boiling water, is used to treat fever, rheumatism, gout, and other disorders.

How about Elephant tusk: “Elephant ivory has been used in huge amounts to make billiards balls, piano keys, identification chops and many other items for human enjoyment.”  OK, right away we get an outlier. Chinese traditional medicine doesn’t use that as an aphrodisiac but instead for other “human enjoyment”. As usual a harmless, loving creature trying to live out its life in peace and harmony with the world gets whacked for human enjoyment.  Now isn’t that special.

So now we’re back around to the pangolin. The Kindly creature, out foraging for ants and minding its own business, is approached by a human. It’s defense is to curl up into a defensive ball. This posture works for its natural predators but in the case of humans it just makes it easy to pick up and stuff into a bag by some schlemiel trying to turn a buck in a country where there’s not much in the line of jobs. So they’re out walking around the bush looking for ant eaters. 

By and by the animals end up in China, a place where they probably didn’t want to go in the first place on account of the fact that ant hunting probably just ain’t that great there. But what the hell. They’re probably dead by the time they get there anyway. Then they get butchered and get their scales taken away for use in “Traditional Chinese Medicine”.

Here’s what happens next: “The animal itself is eaten, but a greater danger arises from the belief that the scales have medicinal value. Fresh scales are never used, but dried scales are roasted, ashed, cooked in oil, butter, vinegar, boy's urine, or roasted with earth or oyster-shells, to cure a variety of ills. Amongst these are excessive nervousness and hysterical crying in children, women possessed by devils and ogres, malarial fever and deafness.”

What? Did I hear that right? I may be suffering from deafness. Gimme some burnt pangolin scales with a side of piss.

So what about “Traditional Chinese Medicine”? Maybe that kind of of hocus-pocus worked in a bygone world when there weren’t 80-gazillion Chinese who can’t get or don’t want traditional western medicine based on science and logic. You must make do with what you’ve got right?

“My wife’s possessed by an ogre. Let’s see what’s around here.” WHACK! Down goes Frasier the pangolin. “OK now I’ll peel off some scales and burn ‘em, then have that kid over there come over and piss on ‘em.” Mmmm. Nice stuff. “Here honey, drink this. It’s great.”

That’s nuts.

So I don’t want to be that guy that presents a problem and doesn’t present a solution. But I don’t have one that’ll work. Somehow the masses of Chinese that are beyond the reach of modernity would need to learn that perhaps some of what they’re doing under the guise of medicine is simply wrong and it doesn’t actually work.

Hey, but maybe some of it does right? Well then someone in that country, scientists perhaps, instead of doing whatever they’re doing should be trying to prove or disprove the tenets of traditional Chinese medicine. If it works great. But if it doesn’t then it needs to be stopped. The massacre of animals for hocus-pocus needs to stop.