Scaly anteater in deadly virus link
A CURIOUS wild animal, which I had barely noticed from past zoological perusals, caught my attention in a feature about a rescue sanctuary in Zimbabwe.
The animal, an endearing-looking creature about the size of a spaniel, seemed amiable to humans, although it did not look particularly cuddlesome being carried by a man over his shoulder like a sack of grain.
This was because its body is covered with thick scales like medieval chain mail — and these are what make it attractive bait for poachers.
The creature’s culinary needs are simple: it spends most of its time foraging in the bush, sniffing out the nests of ants and termites. It can clear out one of these rapidly with an amazing tongue, like a long sticky worm which can extend for 40cms from a funnel snout, with a third eyelid to protect it from stings.
More than a metre in length and looking like a dinosaur hedgehog, the animal can also roll into a ball when threatened — but this makes it easier to pick up.
Its name is pangolin, a Malay derivative, indicating a once wide Far Eastern habitat now virtually poached out, and is found in Africa, from Chad to South Africa. It is also the world’s most trafficked wild animal for its tasty meat but mainly for its scales, used in traditional medicinal preparations.
Its name has now become familiar, in some published material, as a suspected vector, along with bats, of the coronavirus Covid-19.
A story in newspapers last week suggested that as “it seems likely” the original reservoir for the virus was bats, it could have transited to humans via “an immediate animal host” sold in Chinese “wet markets” — and may have been “the scaly mammal called a pangolin”.
This cannot be conclusively proved, although sequence similarities have been found with coronaviruses that infect pangolins.
The animal rescue centre in Zimbabwe was set up 25 years ago by Lisa Hywood, in memory of her father Tikki, with the aim of protecting lesser-known endangered species.
Pangolins are an enigma: no one knows how many are in the wild, or how long they live. They are intelligent creatures, rolling around where they have urinated to clean their scales, the ammonia killing the bugs.
Pangolin meat is prized in the Far East, but their scales are the main attraction for poachers selling to the traditional medicine trade in China and Vietnam and are believed to cure ailments from arthritis to male impotence. A UN study reckoned that more than one million pangolins have been trafficked since 2010, although Zimbabwe is most proactive in pangolin conservation — its national parks offering the best hope of sighting this animal, usually between June and November.