It looks like an armadillo and has been likened to an artichoke, a walking pine cone and a mini dinosaur. The pangolin, a scaly anteater that is the most heavily poached and illegal trafficked mammal around the world, is getting popular support. For the fourth annual World Pangolin Day this year, conservation science students from Imperial College in the UK have started a campaign they call #pumpit4pangolin.
Like the Ice Bucket Challenge for ALS, the pangolin challenge involves recording a video, making a donation and nominating more people to join the campaign. But instead of pouring ice-cold water on your head #pumpit4pangolin requires you to do 21 crunches that bring you close to looking like a pangolin that’s rolling itself up into a ball.
Video: Earth Touch/YouTube
Video: TheLambaghini/YouTube
The pangolin looks like an old bent-over being as it walks on its hind legs. The animal's front claws, which it uses to dig up anthills, are too long to assist in locomotion. Its thick scaly tail helps it maintain balance. The pangolin’s tongue is the longest of any mammal in relation to its body size. The tongue's sticky surface scoop ants up by the dozen.
A startled pangolin rolls itself up into a ball. Its scales are tough enough to withstand onslaughts from sharp-toothed lions and tigers. But the balled-up pangolin poses no threat to a human, who can just pick up the cat-sized animal.
In the last 10 years about a million of these anteaters have been killed for their meat and scales. Between 2009 and 2013, some 3,350 pangolins have been poached in India alone, according to the wildlife trade monitoring agency TRAFFIC India. And that’s a conservative estimate.
Pangolin meat is considered a delicacy and wildlife organisations in India are observing a rising appetite for it in the country. Pangolin scales are used in traditional Asian medicine often sold as cures for anything ranging between asthma and cancer though they have no proven palliative effect.
The #pumpit4pangolin campaign asks for a nominal donation of £1 (Rs 96) for each species of pangolin. The proceeds will go to the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
We welcome your comments at
letters@scroll.in.
Like the Ice Bucket Challenge for ALS, the pangolin challenge involves recording a video, making a donation and nominating more people to join the campaign. But instead of pouring ice-cold water on your head #pumpit4pangolin requires you to do 21 crunches that bring you close to looking like a pangolin that’s rolling itself up into a ball.
Video: Earth Touch/YouTube
Video: TheLambaghini/YouTube
The pangolin looks like an old bent-over being as it walks on its hind legs. The animal's front claws, which it uses to dig up anthills, are too long to assist in locomotion. Its thick scaly tail helps it maintain balance. The pangolin’s tongue is the longest of any mammal in relation to its body size. The tongue's sticky surface scoop ants up by the dozen.
A startled pangolin rolls itself up into a ball. Its scales are tough enough to withstand onslaughts from sharp-toothed lions and tigers. But the balled-up pangolin poses no threat to a human, who can just pick up the cat-sized animal.
In the last 10 years about a million of these anteaters have been killed for their meat and scales. Between 2009 and 2013, some 3,350 pangolins have been poached in India alone, according to the wildlife trade monitoring agency TRAFFIC India. And that’s a conservative estimate.
Pangolin meat is considered a delicacy and wildlife organisations in India are observing a rising appetite for it in the country. Pangolin scales are used in traditional Asian medicine often sold as cures for anything ranging between asthma and cancer though they have no proven palliative effect.
The #pumpit4pangolin campaign asks for a nominal donation of £1 (Rs 96) for each species of pangolin. The proceeds will go to the International Union for Conservation of Nature.