- Inside a metal vault here in rural Vietnam is a creature believed to be the most trafficked mammal in the world. No sounds come from its cage. No squeaks or howls. A padlocked door creaks open to reveal an animal that seems far too unassuming to be traded by the ton.
It looks like a ...
"Dragon,” I say.
"Artichoke,” says a colleague.
"His name is P8," a researcher says.
But everyone calls him Lucky.
If you hear his story it's easy to understand why.
That recommended youtube search of pangolins did show them to be the cutest little bumblers ever.
Change the List might be my favorite journalistic endeavor of 2014. I'd never heard of a Pangolin prior to this article, but they've quickly risen to being one of my favorite animals. How can you not like something like that? It's crazy to me that they're being trafficked at the rate that they are and hardly anybody knows.
Attitudes toward eating wild game and especially endangered species are changing, but unfortunately this is something that's deeply rooted in these cultures. Sometimes securing business means going out with some guys to go eat wild game and drink rice wine infused with different animals or their blood. What is heartening though, is that among the educated and the wealthy, the children are much more aware of the impact of eating these kinds of foods and it's seen more and more as something that the uneducated and less worldly do. Part of the problem though, is that it's the rich that can afford to buy these animals and to consume them most often and it's seen as something tied to status. On the other hand, Malaysia has had great success with ecological tourism, something Vietnam and Indonesia are both eager to capitalize on and so hopefully as more money flows into these countries, there will be less incentive to harvest animals for traditional medicine. Of course, this will involve a lot of effort and effective organizing and I doubt the problem will ever be entirely eradicated, but I do hope that it will at least slow the possibility of extinction for many species.