I’ve never seen or considered that Taiwan has or “might be the planet’s highest concentration of the world’s most-trafficked mammal.”
穿山甲 Chuānshānjiǎ in Chinese.
Making this public may contribute to their demise … poor Pangolins. Hope not .
The list of things Chinese people will eat for the ‘virility’ is bloody endless. Why can’t they just stop it already? Doesn’t Pfizer have any operations in China?
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Hopefully they are changing their ways in China. Vietnam isn’t great either.
A while ago the Taichung while animal shelter release this post on their facebook:
They received a pangolin from a pair of hikers who saw it lying motionless in the middle of the hiking trail. After inspection, the experts at the wild animal shelter determined that the pangolin was unable to move due to… it’s sleeping.
The pangolin was completely unaware that he has been rescued and traveled great dstances, and continued to sleep until dusk. The experts brought him back to the location he was discovered and released him back into the wild.
I hope in the future pagolins are so common place that we’d just walk by a sleepy pangolin and not blink an eye.
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They are everywhere. Behold the famous Pickaxed Pangolin of Taipei!
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That’s a funny story. I have yet to see one in the wild, but from the pictures they sure are interesting
They used to get eaten and trapped for Chinese medicine and became quite rare in Taiwan but are now making a comeback meanwhile they are under extreme threat in SE Asia.
Where do they live? Mountains?
Even Taiwan pangolin’s have dog problems in Taiwan.
“in Taiwan, the scaly mammals brave a different danger: a surging feral dog population.”
Veterinarian Tseng Shao-tung, 28, has seen firsthand what a dog can do to the gentle creatures during his shifts at a hospital in Hsinchu.
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there is a documentary on them here and a lot has to do with human caused issues (including dogs). Note dogs are directly a human issue. They dont stray too far from human development in the mountains.
Just want to add, the Taigi for Pangolin is lâ-lí 鯪鯉.
Ok, I just wanted to know what the word for pangolin is in Indigenous languages and if they share a common etymology. The answer is yes, *qaRem is the Proto-Austronesian word for pangolin.
| PaN | *qaRem |
|---|---|
| Kavalan | irem |
| Saisiyat | ʔæLəm |
| Atayal | qom |
| Seediq | ʔaruŋ |
| Pazeh | axem |
| Amis | ʔalem |
| Thao | qalhum |
| Bunun | qalum |
| Bunun | ʔarəmə |
| Puyuma | HaRem |
| Paiwan | qam |
Interestingly, since the Philippines islands were not connected to the rest of Sundaland, nor Taiwan, nor the Asian mainland, they don’t and didn’t ever have any pangolins. However, islands formerly a part of Sundaland, such as Borneo do have pangolins. The ones from Taiwan are Manis pentadactyla and the ones from Bornea, Java, Sumatra and portions of mainland SEA are Manis javanica. The words for pangolin, ahem, ayem, arem, aken, ham, to name a few, in Borneo languages are cognates with words in Taiwan, and also derived from *qaRem.
This means that early Austronesian settlers from Taiwan didn’t expand slowly through the Philippines, but expanded fast enough along the coast for the word for pangolin to still be fresh in the memories when early settlers to Borneo met one.
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