Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - Pangolins

Episode Date: February 24, 2025

Alex Schmidt and Katie Goldin explore why pangolins are secretly incredibly fascinating.Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources and for this week's bonus episode.Come hang out with us on the SIF Discord: https://discord.gg/wbR96nsGg5

Pangolins, known for being scaly, famous for being cute, so cute. Nobody thinks much about them, so let's have some fun. Let's find out why pangolins are secretly incredibly fascinating. Hey there, folks. Welcome to a whole new podcast episode, a podcast all about why being alive is more interesting than people think it is. My name is Alex Schmidt and I'm not alone because I'm joined by my co-host Katie Golden. Katie! Hello! What is your relationship to or opinion of pangolins? They're amazing and fantastic and they're living pinecones. And I do a whole podcast called Creature Feature on Animals and I was thinking like, I must have done a Pangolin episode before. And then I realized, wait, no, I have not.

Oh, yeah, okay. Yeah. I don't think so. I don't think I have. And I found just thinking about this that I think the internet thinks about Pangolins more than I do. This did very well in the polls and on our Discord and stuff. Thank you to Octo Mysterious Contraption for the suggestion. Also, Vuster, Xtivalis, Donna, Arcblade, Xcarax, JCRDude, lots of people were excited about it. I think this has grown in stature as a famously cute Internet animal. It just hasn't been one that's top of mind for me. Because it kind of has some of the aspects of other animals. So you would think they're related to other groups of animals like armadillos maybe, maybe anteaters, maybe even porcupines, right?

But no, they're just their entirely own weird thing. It's just their entirely own weird thing. And it's also just like kind of surprising that they exist because they look like little weird dragons that you would find drawn in the marginalia of some sort of illuminated manuscript, but they're very real. The one other thing is Pokemon. I only have gotten into Pokemon through Pokemon Go as a grown person and also where there's a little animation of them. My favorite Pokemon is Sandshrew because it does a fun tuck and roll.

People say this is kind of like the Pokemon Sandshrew. I don't know if it's inspired by it. There's not amazing sources about it, but Bulbapedia, the wiki for Pokemon, says that the Japanese name for Sand Slash, which is the evolution of Sand True, is more properly translated as Sand Pan and might be referring to Pangolins. Some people are like, oh, this is an amazing little Pokemon in a way that's different from anteaters or medillas, et cetera. Yeah. There's a lot of animals that I think look a lot like Pokemon, which is funny because

you'd think that evolution would kind of get it together and not do so much copyright infringement. But you know. Like God gets a letter from Nintendo? Like, oh, jeez. Okay. I need to burn documents. Michael? Michael, we're burning some documents.

Get your flaming sword out. Just do it right there. Like real life caterpillars get like a sea syndicis letter for stealing the Caterpie or whatever it's, I don't really know. Caterpie, that's right. Caterpie? Yeah. Flutter flea? Butterfree, I think.

Butterfree. Okay. Yeah. Free butter. That'd be nice. Butter's expensive. What are we talking about? Pangolins and sort of Sand True and Sand Slash.

Yeah. All right. Well, yeah, Pangolins really, they do look sort of like a fictional animal, but they are, yeah, they're very real. They're very cute and also a little strange looking. They're cute and a sort of wouldn't want to have one sort of like show up on top of me in the middle of the night thinking that it's going to find some sweet, sweet termites in the middle of my guts. It's got really long claws that look kind of terrifying, like little sides.

Yeah. Yeah. Its front limbs have huge claws and then it's kind of an anteater looking face and then huge scales all over it. And yeah, of course people can easily just Google this animal. We'll have pictures on social media. I think most people have seen them because they're world famous now in a few ways we'll talk about. But if you haven't, it's both cute and also clearly built to do some business to some insects. It's like an anteater in a pine cone had a baby that spits in God's eye. God's like, if I get spit in the eye, can that be the settlement for the lawsuit? And Nintendo's like, I guess.

We're suing God, folks. It's happening. New executive order. We're suing God, folks. It's happening. New executive order. We're suing God. And folks, on every episode, we leave with a quick set of fascinating numbers and statistics. This week, that's in a segment called, Don't Waste Your Stats On Me. You're Already Numbers Inside My Head. Beautiful.

Thank you. And that name was submitted by Trevor Galvin. Thank you, Trevor. We have a new name for this every week. Please make a Missilean Wacky and Bad as possible. Submit through Discord or to sifpotatgmail.com. And first number this week is about 70 million. Ooh.

Seven zero million. It sounds unbelievable, but it's an estimate for the annual insect consumption by one adult Chinese pangolin. Wow. That's a lot of buggos. In a year, 70 million bugs. That's kind of like that fake statistic that says that you eat like 200 spiders a year. And it's just not true. You'd probably eat zero spiders a year. And it's just not, it's not true. There's, you'd probably eat zero spiders a year unless you're really lucky

or you are trying to eat the spiders. But these guys look like they do, well, I don't think it's spiders. I think they usually go after ants and termites and dig them up and slurp them up. That's right, ants and termites, yeah. Yeah, and just imagine them all at once, a pile. That feels like that's multiple entire human beings

that these penguins are eating in a year, made out of bugs. Yeah, and this definitely seems to be a loose estimate, but it is from scientists. It's a team from Zhejiang Normal University in China and also a collaborator at Ghent University in Belgium. They say that across a year, because they're pretty much constantly eating or resting, one adult of the Chinese pangolin species eats at least 70 million ants and termites across the year. They'll also mix in insect larvae, bees, flies, earthworms, crickets. They'll just really go for it.

Yeah, man. Just whatever they can slurp up, which I don't know if you're going to talk about this, but it's really great because they don't have teeth. All they have is this giant super sticky tongue that's like fly paper. It's got, it's not like just plain old saliva. It's basically like this goo, like this gluey goo that coats it. They stick it down in the termite hole that they dig up,

which is like, that's why they have those big claws. They dig up the termite mound or whatever, grubs, ants, and then just zoot, like stick that tongue in there and whatever comes back out, comes back out and it gets that right in there. Yeah, I had no idea. I'm glad you do because they have a hyoid bone in their mouth instead of teeth. And the hyoid bone is basically a big sweeping bone inside the mouth, sweeping them off the tongue into their stomach. And that's it.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, all like the hyoid bone is something that most animals have, which helps connect your tongue to basically your body. So it doesn't just fall out. But yeah, theirs is like very, it's specifically designed to be able to shoot out this massively long tongue and then retract it because their tongue, like for some of the larger pangolins, they can like extend their tongue out over a foot. Yeah, that's amazing. Yeah. They're truly a insect-avouring machine, and that's one of the biggest parts of it.

They also have spikes in their stomachs because they don't have teeth. It helps them grind up the little insects. Just imagine you're a little termite, and you're minding your own business, and you're just in your little termite mound. And then suddenly there's like huge, sticky, disgusting foot long tongue grabs you

and like slurps you up. And then you're just in like basically a paper shredder stomach full of spikes and sometimes pebbles cause they'll like eat pebbles. So that like that as they're digesting, it just is turning into this masher machine, like an industrial grinder, so that they have bug soup in their tummies. Yeah.

That, just to highlight it, is our first takeaway number one. Pangolins have spikes on their outsides and their insides in order to eat massive amounts of insects. They're as spiky on the inside as they are on the outside. It's really sweet. Yeah, it's all exactly like you said. They'll eat stones that are technically called gastrolytes because the way their stomach works is almost more like a bird's gizzard, even though I think it's not technically a gizzard. It's not the usual mammal thing where there's a bunch of acids in your stomach that eat away at what you've eaten. It's just a bunch of stones and spikes. And they get crushed until they are done crushing them.

Yeah. What's weird is anteaters actually do the same thing. They don't have teeth and they have very similar faces, actually very similar body plan in general other than the scales. They have the really long sticky tongues, similar diet, and they do the whole thing where they have like stones inside of their stomach that sometimes they eat to help like mash up the bug soup. But they are not related to ant eaters much more than any other mammal. Yeah, that was so surprising that they just kind of both develop these skills.

You know, great. Good for them. Yeah, it's a it's a case of either convergent or parallel evolution where they're arriving at the same body plan, even though they're both mammals. They're not like that closely related, which is curious. Yeah. Yeah. And apparently that's a recent finding that armadillos and anteaters are just not that related to pangolins, even though armadillos have a sort of scaly outside and anteaters have a lot of these insect destruction capabilities. It's just kind of how it is. It's separate.

There is a lot of weird, uncanny coincidences in evolution and it really is just the whole sort of carcerization thing where a lot of animals, a lot of arthropods kind of independently come up with the crab body plan. There's just certain features that work really well. Like when you're, when you're under certain evolutionary pressures, it works really, really, really well. So like having a large claws, having some kind of body armor, having a big long sticky tongue. All good ideas.

Yeah. And just eating bugs, it seems like. Timon and Pumbaa really onto something. Wow. Yeah. Why are you chasing one gazelle? And there's almost no gazelle out there. Like that 70 million bugs number, that's such a tiny number in comparison to how many

bugs we have in the world. And I'm someone who like, I don't want to eat bugs just because I have that sort of cultural revulsion towards them. So I'm grossed out by it. But I wish I didn't have that reaction, right? Because again, more opportunities for bugs. Honestly when I watch a pangolin tear down on a termite mound and just slurp up loads of termites or ants, it kind of looks good.

It's like a nerd's rope, but a tongue covered in termites. Does that make sense? Does that make things more appealing? Evolution either moves toward a crab or a nerd's rope. Those are the two perfect structures. You can't say. Yeah. Yeah. And the other kind of perfect design elements of a Pangolin, it's basically its whole face.

Because they not only have scales all over most of their outside. They also have thick eyelids and they have special valves on their nostrils and their ear holes that can shut. One reason that a lot of animals don't just plow into an ant colony or a termite mound is that the ants or termites will fight back. They'll swarm, they'll bite, they'll sting. Pangolins have armored faces. They just get through it. Ants have formic acid that they can use as like a stinging sort of defense mechanism. Termites, I think, also have some chemical defense mechanisms. So like the biting, the chemical defense. If you've ever stuck your hand in an anthill with the wrong species of ants, you know, it's not, it's not a fun time. So yeah, having those, that, uh, defense,

like it's like a lot of the, their defenses is not just to protect them from predators, but from their own source of food that they're preying upon. Yeah, a hundred percent. And yeah, so they they're truly just good at weathering the defenses of these animals that more animals would eat otherwise. Yeah. They just push through.

And then they bust in with their huge powerful claws on their front limbs. They do have front limbs that they can walk on a little bit, but they mostly just walk on their two back legs. Apparently, the technical term is they are facultative bipeds. They walk on their two back legs and they can use their front limbs if they want to. But that means there's funny videos of them walking where they sort of look awkward and sheepish walking around. They kind of waddle. It's interesting because they can also they can also swim It's kind of like watching a sloth swim where you're like, oh dang. I didn't expect that to happen

But yeah, they can they can swim. They're not like sort of humaning it around It's sort of a wattle and like a penguin wattle and then falling forward on their legs Yeah, I looked up a YouTube video of it and comments were very funny. One person said they walk like they wash their hands before noticing there's no towels in the bathroom. And so they're just like, put the little hands. It's the Mr. Burns walk with the little hands held out like shuffle the Mr. Burns shuffle. Yeah. There's like, I think we should also point out there's a lot of different species of pangolins.

So some of them are gonna spend more time on the ground. Some of them are more arboreal, meaning they spend more time in the trees. So like they'll spend a lot of time climbing. They also have a really long tail that's super muscular and is you're nodding. I don't want to steal another takeaway from you. Is this another one?

Oh, no. Okay. It's just more numbers. Yeah. Okay. They've got prehensile tails. I mean, it's one tail. I don't know what numbers you're going to have to the tail.

One. They have one tail. One, they have one tail. One tail. Unlike tails from Sonic the Hedgehog who has two tails. How many tails does tails have from Sonic the Hedgehog? I don't know that world very well actually. Right, yeah. I'm focused on saying true.

Gotta go fast. Yeah. That's what I know about that world is you gotta go fast or you die. Yeah, the number there is about 23 million years ago. Because about 23 million years ago is when pangolins in Africa and in Asia diverged genetically, we think. Ooh, okay.

There's at least eight pangolin species worldwide, four in Africa, four in Asia. Like you said, there's a lot of variation in how they live and what they do. Some live in trees, some live in burrows. The Sunda pangolin species in Southeast Asia sleeps in trees. They're also usually nocturnal, but the long-tailed pangolins in Africa are active during the day. They're diurnal. So other than eating huge amounts of insects and growing scales, they actually vary a bit

in size and behavior and everything. Yeah, I think the largest pangolin is 70 pounds. I think that's the giant pangolin. And then there's the smallest pangolin is about five pounds. So they're itty bitty. They're cute. Yeah, they're kind of the same shapes, but the way they live and operate very different and the sizes are different. Yeah. Yeah, but they're all little little pine cone dragon looking things. Yeah, because another number is one third. That's how much of an adult Indian pangolin's body weight is the scales.

A third of its weight is just these scales all over its body, usually like the very bottom of their tummy and maybe the insides of their limbs don't have scales and the whole rest of the body is scaly. Would you say they're tipping the scales? Yeah. I'm really a smug about that one. It's fun because it's about a cute animal. So I'm just enjoying that too. This is what I do like after the holidays when maybe I step on that old scale and there's a different number there than there was pre-December. I'm like, it's just the scales, man.

I shouldn't have eaten 70 million insects, so boy. My keratinous scales. That's what does it. Yeah, and they're keratinous. I guess I hadn't said that yet. Yeah, they're made out of similar material to human fingernails and toenails. So it's very hard, but also something we're familiar with. Yeah, which I think is a very unique structure. There's really no other species of mammals that have this scale structure. Even though they have a similar body plan to anteaters and like the armadillo, they have a tough sort of outer skin.

It's a different, it's a very different construction. It's a very different type of scale than say like it, cause armadillos have plates. Rhinoceroses have like thickened hide that sort of can be somewhat in plates. And then like porcupines have like modified hair bristles that are a lot harder. But pangolins having these scale structures, it's just like that's completely unique to their genus.

It's really cool. Yeah, it's so unique. It's just not going on with most other mammals from their stomach to their outside. It really makes them look very reptilian, but they are, they're completely mammals. They're not even monotremes. It's wild to see this kind of exterior on a mammal because it's kind of the closest any animal I see,

have seen like gets to sort of what I, like the texture of say like dragon scales and fiction, like including reptiles because reptiles do have scales but they aren't sort of this like interlocking thing like think Game of Thrones dragons like that kind of those interlocking shapes like this really looks like that but they're a little mammal they're just a little weird guy they are and yeah the scales are a bit sharp too. Apparently they can swing their tail if they haven't balled up all the way, because they'll

ball up to just be a ball of scales for defense. But if they want to, they can also slash a little bit. Another number about scales is shortly after birth. It's kind of a number. Oh, I see. That's like a point in time. Timeline. That is a, that's how soon a baby pangolin scales start to harden.

They are born with scales, but just they're very soft. So they come out okay. That's similar to hedgehogs actually, because like baby hedgehogs are born all pink and with like little nubs, little nubbies that are all squishy. And then the little nubs start to harden into actual like, you know, the hedgehog bristles. But yeah, it's, I mean, it makes sense, right? Because like, you gotta get that baby out somehow. And what if it's not facing the right way?

Well, that's not gonna be a good time. And then the other thing is what if they're born totally defenseless? So they're born with a soft version of scales that immediately start to become tough, but after you're out, that's wild. It's like when you put icing on a cake and then you got to wait a little while and then it kind of hardens. Pretty much. But for babies.

Yeah. Yeah, you put the baby on a cookie cooling rack or something. Yeah, sure. It's like you got to dry out a little bit, baby. It's spectacularly cute, by the way, the little baby penguin just planking on its mom's tail, little eyes closed, giant ears. The ears I think are disproportionately large compared to its little head. As adults, I think the ear holes are less prominent, but on the baby, they're quite big and it's very cute. Yeah, and especially the species that walk on the ground for the first three to four months,

the baby will ride on mom's tail. That's so cute. In other cute news, another number is July 2024. July 2024, that is when a baby tree pangolin was born at Brookfield Zoo in Illinois. Oh, aww. Yeah. Cute. Brookfield Zoo in Illinois. Aw, aw, cute. And this story was covered by WTTW Channel 11, which is the Chicago PBS affiliate. I used to be a tour guide at Brookfield Zoo and I used to be an intern at WTTW. So I'm biased all around. I'm weird.

You can't trust me. I am looking at photos of a baby penguin drinking out of a baby bottle, gripping onto someone's thumb. And I have, I have, I am now deceased. I am dead. But yeah, they're so cute. It's going to happen sometime in the show. I've been dead for minutes.

Yeah. They got, they're very, it's, they're cute in a very like primeval looking way. They're just, it's, they just do not look like real animals, but they're adorable. It's kind of a baby dragon energy. Yeah. Right. But it's, but it's mammalian. So their eyes have like warmth in them.

So like- That too. Yeah. You know, like they, they You know, like they've got cute, like they've got these very round little noses. They've got sensitive little eyes, cute little pointy snoots and then amazing hairstyles because like they've got, their scales actually go all the way up until they're snout, they're snouts.

So it covers their entire head, but then like below it, their eyes and jawline and their ears are not covered in the scales. It's just supremely cute. Yeah, it's really great. And also, this was bigger news than the average zoo baby because it's relatively hard to keep and breed pangolins at a zoo. Part of the reason

is the rarity of the animals, but also that they are pretty solitary except for mating. If a zoo wants to have more than a few pangolins, they need separate spaces for all of them. In the wild, a male pangolin marks its location with feces or urine to announce that women can come and do the only social thing pangolins do and mate if they want to. It's very funny to me. I get what you're saying. It's very funny to me when you call female animals women. Oh, sure.

Yeah, yeah. You know, broads, gals, what else? You know, you got to pee to get these women to like me. And by women, I mean female pangolins. Speaking of female pangolins, I am looking at a pangolin named Roxy who was rescued. She's a Cape Pangolin. And I did not realize, Alex, I know this is a family friendly show,

but Pangolins, they got it going on in terms of, boozooms. Oh, great. Like the boozoom part. I have to show you. Yeah. I'm sorry. But this is maybe unprofessional of me, but it's true. It's also like elephants.

Oh. Yeah. Yeah. Because they're mammals and they have nipples and mammaries because they feed their young milk. And I simply did not realize how prominent they were. And also that it's kind of like similar to humans and that you have like a set of two large mammary glands.

I don't know if they have vestigial nipples as well, but that's actually similar to elephants. Like if you look at, if you ever have seen an elephant while it's nursing standing on its hind legs, which is very rare, so you probably haven't, it actually has breasts that look, you know, similar to like say primates, right? Like where there's breasts there. And it's just a little surprising sometimes to see on an animal that is neither ape nor human. You're absolutely right. Yeah, it looks Photoshopped or something. It is typical for a lot of mammals to have

not just like two dominant nipples, right? Like you'll have like sort of milk lines because of having a large litter, right? Like as far as I understand it, pangolins usually only have one baby at a time, one or two babies at a time. Yeah, yeah, it's very small amounts or just one, yeah. And it's similar with elephants

and they also have the, you know, just two nipples going on there. Have I derailed the podcast with pangolin t***s? It's part of life. It's part of life. It's part of life folks. It's part of life. We can't be prudes when it comes to pangolins because they let it all hang out man. And with the salutariness of pangolin mating, Brookfield Zoo got one baby out of a population of 13 tree pangolins. They always might get more, but they only ever have one on exhibit to the public and

the other 12 are somewhere behind the scenes. It's taken pretty careful social and romantic management to get two genetically-compatible tree pangolins to mate in captivity. So, tricky. Yeah, I mean it kind of makes sense. It's like people get really critical of animals that have trouble mating in captivity like pandas, but imagine if aliens abducted you and then like put you in a room with say like Kid Rock and they're like now mate and it's like no, no thank no, thank you. No, thank you very much. Please. Nope. Not going to happen. Yeah. No, no thanks. Yeah. I mean, I was into it until he ate 70 million insects in front of me. Then I was kind of, then I was less on board. It was not enough insects. Right. He's a beta insect survivor.

Yeah. Yeah. And I also, I'm going to pry myself, I did a little extra journalism because I called the zoo and asked if there's a name for the baby yet. Wow. And as of February 2025, they're thinking about a naming contest. There's not a name for the baby pangolin yet. Well, folks, hey, let's manipulate.

Let's let's do some election interference and name this baby pangolin. Alex, what do you think would be a good name for baby pangolin? Alex Schmidt. Yeah, that would be great. Try to name this baby penguin Alex Schmidt. Everyone call in. Let's have to name this baby penguin Alex Schmidt. Everyone call in. Alex Schmidt, former guide. All one word, Alex Schmidt. And also in general, the name for a baby pangolin is a pangopup.

No, come on. Really good. You're joking. Pango pup. I think it's like a little bit of, you know, some of these animal group names or baby names are a little made up, but this one I found pretty much everywhere. So yeah. Oh, it's so cute.

Pengu pup. That does definitely sound like a Pokemon. It really does. Yeah. And folks, that's a ton of numbers and a takeaway about pangolins. We have a few more takeaways to come, including a lot of international politics and epidemiology and more. So stick around. Hey there. Do you like books about various shades of gray?

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Hello, internet. I'm your husband, host Travis McElroy. And I'm your wife, host Teresa McElroy. And this is a promo for Schmaners. It's extraordinary etiquette. For ordinary occasions. Every week, we're gonna tell you about a bit of culture, a bit of history, how etiquette still applies in the modern day, all that stuff.

We also love to do biographies and histories of and, you know, general procedurals, how to do etiquette in today's society. So come check it out every Friday on maximumfun.org or wherever you find your podcasts. Manor shmaners, get it? And folks, we're back with a lot of takeaways about pangolins in the world. Starting with takeaway number two. We know so little about pangolins, we might have discovered some new pangolin species in the process of busting poachers.

Listen, during the break, I was trying to learn more about pangolin boobs and it just does not seem like there's a lot of information about it. I guess epidemiology is also important. We took a one year break. Katie's been on a sabbatical just learning, studying, examining. Listen, it's a genuine field of inquiry. Be an adult about it, please, as I Google. Do pangolins have boobies?

Yeah, and pangolins, they're solitary, all but one of the main species are nocturnal. They usually try to live as separately from people as possible. And so, between pangolins being hard to find and a global effort to end pangolin poaching, we've learned a lot about them from crime labs and the forensic science of busting pangolin poachers. Oh man, is there a TV show about pangolin crime called Pango NCIS or something that is funded by anti-poaching Pangolin units that has strong incestual overtones. Of course, I of course refer to our bonus podcast, USPIS, about the US United States Postal Inspection Service.

It's called the Inspector's Inspectors, but maybe we should just rename it USPIS. Like that seems stronger. But it's it's a this does seem like it would come under the purview of USPIS because like that like as the show make sure like to emphasize like postal crime includes smuggling and... This has mostly been busted by authorities in other countries, but that's mostly just because Pangolins come from those places. But apparently the US is the number two country for Pangolin smuggling and Pangolin part smuggling. Number one is China, number two is the US.

It has to do with the scales, right? There's some belief about the scales having some health benefits which have not been proven. Exactly right. And also some people eat the meat as an exotic meat and then some people want them as exotic pets. And they don't do well as pets. Like they don't do super well in zoos. Zoos, it's worth it. But exotic pet, don't do that. **Maya** It's funny. It's like I most sympathize with people eating an animal much more than like trying to keep it as an exotic pet or use parts of it for medicine that does not have any proven benefit. I don't know why it's just like, you know, like yeah Like I guess yeah food, but clearly we don't we don't need to be eating these guys for food though. There's plenty of other

meat around Yeah, and this this takeaway of course has some darkness to it because it's about poaching mangelins But yeah, there's also amazing science here. Is that the only way people cook them? That's terrible. That's terrible. Just take, just send me to jail. I love pangolins and I don't want them to be...

Just a good pun about it. I really, I cope with things. Let me, before anyone gets mad at me, and you can be mad at me if you'd like, but I do feel very sad about pangolins being poached because I really love them. I hate it. And I don't know, I'm running from my feelings, Alex. And the, yeah, like basically until the 2010s, it seems like this was just a pretty rampant trade. And the good news is people are starting to rein it in.

The key sources here, an amazing piece for the New York Times Trail of Bites section by Darren N. Corvaya, another New York Times story by Rachel Neuer, a piece for Knowable magazine by Natasha Gilbert, and for Smithsonian magazine by Maylon Sali. Pangolins are one of, if not the most, post-intrafficked animals in the world. For pets, for meat, also the skin gets turned into exotic leather, like the skin under the scales. But the biggest reason is the scales. People use them for decorations and then there's also a belief that they are an ingredient that is active in ancient medicines. But it seems to be a placebo effect, if anything. Modern science can't find any medical use

of pangolin scales. The thing is like animal exploitation is always iffy, right? And I'm saying this as someone who's, I'm not a vegetarian. And certainly like the farming system in the US is pretty terrible. So no arguments there. But there are certain animals that just are, when they're kept in a domestic situation where they're not being mistreated, it's a lot more optimal than say, poaching certain animals that really just don't, it's not a sustainable animal to use for things like food or materials, unfortunately.

06.00 Exactly. Yeah, they just don't do well with this kind of hunting. And also poachers are kind of the main danger to an adult pangolin because their ability to roll up in a ball, it makes them very safe from other animals. We'll link sources where there's pictures of like African lions just looking at a rolled up pangolin or like giving it a nibble and they can't, like a lion can't eat it. But then when a human poacher comes, they just also make a ball and then we poach them very easily. They don't run away so much. Yeah. No, it's not very fair. I mean,

and like the lions will sometimes like sort of nudge it around like a soccer ball. It's, it's kind of funny, even though I do feel very much for the penguin in that situation where it's gotta, gotta be like going, oh damn, oh damn, oh damn. Sweating buckets. Yeah, it's like, it seems like stressful but survivable. Like they'll be okay in the end, which is astounding. But unfortunately it makes it like, you don't have to be a super competent poacher to catch

a pangolin, unfortunately. And like it says, the poaching, it's for sort of like a large market, right? It's not so much people who live locally who maybe are trying to hunt for just sustenance meat. That's the main problem, right? Yeah, that's right. Yeah, it's usually been a export business it like the one country that seems to have a market of Locally using it has been China just because it's a massive country and also has a lot of pangolins but in the summer of 2020, the government removed pangolin scales from an official list of traditional medical ingredients. And China

also gave pangolins the strictest legal conservation status on the same level as pandas. So since 2020, the People's Republic has done a lot to try to stop it. 2020. Now what? The next takeaway is about 2020. Yeah. We'll get there. Very good foreshadowing. It was the last time we were able to use those glasses that made sense for the new years because two zeros. So you can have the 2020 New Year's glasses. That's why I was thinking of 20. That's the one significant thing about 2020. Yeah, until it's the year 2030, every new year's is crud.

That's what I think. Yeah. It's a terrible eyewear. Yeah. They try so hard. It worked really well for 2000. And until 2020, it really didn't work. Yeah, the first decade of the century, we were cruising.

You're just like 2001, 2002. And then like trying to, yeah, like with the two zeros. And then once we got to the teens, like, I don't know, I'll put a one on top of a zero. It's like, no guys, you can't. I remember that. It was so bad. Anyways, you can tell I just really don't want to revisit 2020. I'm desperately to derail us.

The other poaching thing, like we said, there's either in Africa or Asia, that's the two continents with a lot of pangolin species. In Africa, a lot of stopping pangolin poaching has involved stopping the poaching of other animals too, like pachyderms. The biggest bust there was in the country of Malawi. Because apparently in the mid 2010s, countries around Malawi started tightening their restrictions on poaching. So then Malawi became a poaching hotbed and mainly for export to the rest of the world. But then in 2017, Malawi started tightening it up and did a years-long bus and sting of a poacher named Yunhua Lin, who was poaching elephant

ivory and rhino horns and pangolins. The big break in the case was that in 2019, they did a traffic stop of this poacher's driver, like his chauffeur, and they found three live pangolins in the trunk. Oh my God. Because this guy was planning on personally eating them, the meat. Oh. Thanks to that one bus, they were able to unwind his entire network. By 2021, they imprisoned him and 18 colleagues. So pangolin poaching and busting in Africa, it involves the pachyderms too. It's kind of interconnected.

Yeah. I mean, I feel like in general, we just need to protect any species who have sort of boobies going on. I mean, that policy would work. that would do the good things right it would include elephants pangolins basically every primate human beings Humans right and if you and if you if there's any species that's not included that should be you just Use for you just slap a fake pair on there and then suddenly right, you know You can't touch them if the if Sonic the Hedge can be pregnant, we can generate whatever evidence we need for this.

I'm really glad you bring up Sonic the Hedgehog being pregnant. I did. At this stage of the episode, we're leading into it. All right. We're literally like, let's get into it. You can definitely cut this. I did Google, do rhinoceroses have boobs? Because I was curious, are all these potable animals also rockin' a pair? It didn't bring me any closer to the answer, but it did bring me some very interesting results.

You're going to be scrubbing your computer with household cleaning products soon. I want them to know. I want my FBI agent following me to know. With all this busting, the fixation on Pangolin scales means that huge stockpiles of them get caught by police. There were a few particularly bizarre busts in 2019. In February 2019, police in Hong Kong announced a world record bust of nine tons of pangolin scales. But then two months later, police in Singapore announced a 14-ton bust as a new new record. They estimate that that bust of 14 tons of pangolin scales had a street value of $38.7 million US dollars. Jeepers. Yeah. That's wild. I mean,

God, that must have been a lot of pangolins though. That's pretty upsetting. Yeah. They think about 36,000 pangolins. But the thing is these horrendous poachers getting so many scales from so many pangolins. In the process, law enforcement says, let's do DNA analysis of the scales because if we know which pangolins are where, then maybe that can help us catch the poachers. It's useful crime information. And along the way, they think they found two additional species of pangolin that we had not observed or classified yet. Whoa. I mean... Which is not a win for science. It's just shocking, you know?

At the very least, it's good to get some research out of it. But man, that's super unfortunate. It's really, I don't know, I find it kind of like disturbing when you see something like that. Like just because I see this image of just like a bunch of scales and you think about like, man, like that's a lot of just animals that were snuffed out for this, which doesn't really do much to better humanity in any way. do much to better humanity in any way. Yeah. Yeah. It's just definitely clearly poaching. There's no benefit to any of that. And in the process, maybe then we can both bust more poachers and classify more pangolins. After those huge 2019 busts,

a combined team at Chinese and French universities used DNA from scales busted in 2012, 2013, 2015, and 2019 to announce a ninth species of pangolin that lives in Asia that we've probably seen but just not understood was separate from others. And then about a month before this episode will come out, scientists and police in India announced that DNA from scales sees there are probably from a tenth species. Whoa. That they're calling the Indo-Burmese pangolin. That's so new, we don't really have more to say about it. But we're just finding out more in the process of combined crime fighting and conservation.

That's the best you can do in a situation where so much damage has already been done, unfortunately. If people are wondering why didn't we notice these new species before, it's really hard to tell between species sometimes. Something can look really similar but then have like a pretty distinct, say like genetic lineage or something. And then that's how you would differentiate the species that they're distinct enough genetically and in terms of their lineage that they would be a separate species. Sometimes it's like a subspecies, right? Like if they're close enough to other species. Yeah, and there's a subspecies of the Chinese pangolin that's called the Taiwanese pangolin or the Formosa pangolin. It's just because they're very similar but living in different places. So

there's those differences too. Yeah. But we think they're genetically distinct enough based on what we found in scale DNA and have not really observed yet. We just know it's something to look for in the wild. Next takeaway here about pangolins in the world, takeaway number three. We now think that pangolins did not play a role in transmitting COVID to humans. That was an early theory in the COVID pandemic and we don't think pangolins were an avenue of that. If the extremely tiny and pointy fingered glove does not fit, you must acquit. It would be such a weird glove shape. It would look like a knife holder or something. Yeah.

Like, is this a glove? Like a little, yeah, like a tiny sack for miniature bananas or something. Yeah. So, that's interesting. They don't think it came from the pangolins at wet markets now. Yeah. And we're going to keep this takeaway short partly because podcasts have a terrible track record talking about COVID.

But in general, the current consensus is that... You mean you don't think I can cure it with horse de-warmer? Exactly. I actually, I have a controversial take, which is I think you can cure it with horses. So like the mistake was just doing the ivermectin. I think that if you like sort of like just right on the mouth kiss a horse, it might suck the COVID right out of you. I mean, I'm already in love with a horse.

So you're saying this could have medical benefits. I, you know what? I'm already in so much trouble for so many terrible things I said on this episode. I'll just stop right there. Cool, cool. Yeah, cool. Yeah, and this was always debated.

I'm going to link a March 2020 article from the New York Times, which pushed back on the new theory that pangolins had a role. This has always been debated, but the key sources for the latest consensus are interviews and writing by Dr. Ralph Baric, who's a professor of epidemiology at the University of North Carolina. And then also a June 2021 study by scientists from China West Normal University and Oxford University working together. But yeah, podcasts shouldn't cover COVID really. We have a Pangolin episode where we can take that angle on did Pangolins

play a role? And there are two reasons people thought they might have. One is that viruses can be zoonotic. They can jump from one species to a different species to a different species. And we are a species of animal. So that's how it could happen. Yeah. And especially if humans eat the meat of one of those animals, maybe that helps it along. And there was like a wet market near the epicenter of COVID. So that was another reason that that theory was pretty popular. Yeah. And this, the other reason people thought pangolins might have a role is that there

is a coronavirus that infects pangolins. Like COVID is not the only kind of virus that is called a coronavirus and is of a super general type like that. So people said, hey, viruses can be zoonotic and pangolins have a coronavirus. So the theory was they gave us some kind of coronavirus. So it's not a super wild theory, but that was the theory. Apparently people went on to study the pangolin coronavirus, the one that pangolins share with each other. And it's just not that similar to COVID-19.

It's just like unlikely that one became the other. It's also unlikely that pangolins and bats exchange anything with each other. They don't really spend time together. And on top of that, there was an interesting study that happened from 2017 to 2019. And this was these teams in China and at Oxford, they were trying to study a tick-borne illness in the Wuhan China area. So they just happened to record which animal species were being sold at these markets, and neither bats nor pangolins were commonly sold. And so all the various reasons people thought pangolins were commonly sold. And so

all the various reasons people thought pangolins played a role, it's just probably not them. The other reason to just think about that is that early in the pandemic, some people suggested a call of pangolins. But it seems like nobody really acted on that, partly because it's just like hard to go out and find all the pangolins. So I'm glad people didn't go through with that. But we need to be sure about that stuff before we call the animal species. The animal species has a right to just exist, right? Even if it poses some problems, right?

Like, oh, sometimes people are killed by venomous snakes. That doesn't mean we should go out and call a bunch of snakes all the time. I'm looking at you, St. Patrick, you jerk. But I have to point out that I'm like half-ish Irish. I don't really... It's all watered down. I'm a mutt baby. But it's the same thing of like, well, it should be culling bats. Like, no, we should be making sure that our human civilization is not cornering these animal species so much that we're running into them a lot and having human beings interacting a lot, especially with certain species that are more, possibly more likely to have a zoonosis like jump from it.

And you like the situations where it's more likely can be bats. And one of the reasons that it's thought that this happens in bats is that they have a really sort of unique immune system that can sometimes like tamp down a virus without completely getting rid of it so that the virus can kind of like be there in very low amounts in the bat for a while. And so that might allow it to mutate more. This is all sort of like theoretical.

I don't think anything has been like very precisely determined in terms of why bats, like diseases can come from bats, but culling them is just the wrong solution to an identified problem. And we have to understand that the other frustrating thing is that early in the pandemic, some people were wasting their time thinking about pangolins when there was just everything else we should have been working on instead. We didn't need to think about pangolins at all.

With a pair of boobs like this, no amount of time is wasted thinking of the pangolins. Man, I sound like such a weird degenerate on this podcast today. The point is we're pangolin respecters. Moving on. Moving on. Moving on. So very last thing for the main show and it leads to the bonus too, but the last takeaway is takeaway number four. The country of Taiwan is a world leader in pangolin conservation. Taiwan specifically has become a unique haven for pangolins and mainly the Taiwanese subspecies

of the Chinese pangolin. I see. So like how do they just intercept a lot of poaching or do they have pangolin reserves? Both, especially the second thing. They have amazing reserves of both official facilities and just natural space. They do a good job not hunting them and taking care of them. That's fantastic. Yeah. Keysource here is reporting for Al Jazeera by Erin Hale and also the production blog

of a BBC two television show called Big Little Journeys, and then also a piece for the Harvard International Review by staff writer Elizabeth Jung. Pangolins are endemic to Taiwan. It's part of the range of the Chinese pangolin species. In 1912, Imperial Japan occupied Taiwan. That was accidentally the start of a lot of new conservation efforts in Taiwan because Japanese forces extracted a lot of natural resources. They especially extracted rare timber. When Japanese occupation ends in 1945, and there's also a revolution in mainland China and then you end up with an independent Taiwan, but people there worked to conserve their timber that they remembered

being seized recently. When you set up a lot of forests, you also just protect a lot of animals too. TG. These guys, by the way, I'm looking at a picture of Taiwanese pangolins and they're super, super cute. They got little fluffies on, because they have the sort of pine cone like scales on their back, but then they're, the unscaled part is sort of fluffy, cream colored, very cute. The pangolins are interesting because there's such species diversity, but they're so universally

cute. They're all cute. And in a similar way. It's great. Right. The kind of new country of Taiwan that's also reeling from breaking off from what becomes the People's Republic of China, they say, hey, we need to conserve our forests and also just be ready to do a lot of things as this new place. And today it's estimated that at least 15% of all the land in Taiwan is under some kind of environmental designation.

Wow. It's not a small place. Like that's a lot of land, you know? Yeah. That's fantastic. Yeah. These little guys, they deserve a break, I think. Getting blamed for COVID, getting poached, getting... Right. They've had a hard time. Yeah.

And as they preserved forests, they realized, hey, we can protect animals too, cause they'll just live in the forest. And then in 1989, they passed what's considered a Landmark Wildlife Conservation Act in Taiwan that protected pangolins among many other species. And so between wildlife laws and forest habitat laws and the just economic success of Taiwan, it's prevented a lot of the decline of their pangolin population.

Because also with the economy going well, you don't have as many people turning to poaching. They can just get a regular job. So it's fine. So when you take care of people and you take care of animals and the environment, it makes things better for everyone. I don't know. I think we might, but what if you put like a water park where the forest was instead,

Alex? I'll think about it. Yeah. You know, water slide, pangolins. Water slide, pangolins. Maybe the pangolins will enjoy the waterslide. You said they can swim. You said that.

They can. They can. Caught you. Yeah. Yeah. It's also, we don't mean to over-idealize it. There is just the situation with so many animals where human habitats crowd natural habitat. And so like industrial fertilizers and dogs and things from human life can interfere with

pangolin life. But it's a very well-sustained population that might be the most sustained in the world. Apparently, they have so many wild pangolins in Taiwan that the Taipei Zoo has 13 pangolins that are zoo residents and rotated through being on exhibit to the public. But then at nighttime when the zoos closed, wild pangolins come through and eat the bugs on the zoo grounds. They have plenty of pangolins at the zoo. They almost don't need to keep them. What do you think is the conversation between the zoo pangolins and then the wild pangolins

just talking through the bars on little like telephones. Like the zoo penguins just like putting a little hand up on the glass between them. It's like be out in 20. I really like that question in the context of apparently the Taipei Zoo can rewild some of their penguins like when they have babies or when one is ready to go back out. Put them on parole. All right. So like, so there's some exchange between these populations too.

Like they might be like, hey, Jerry's out. He's doing good. Oh, cool. I'm glad Jerry's out. That's great. Yeah. I'm working on getting you a lawyer and an appeal. Oh, they're trying to use those little phones where there's glass between, but their claws

smash the phone completely. It's just too powerful. They're trying to use those little phones where there's glass between, but their claws smash the phone completely. It's just too powerful. Don't worry. The scales of justice will be righted someday. The scales of justice. Scales. You're not laughing. Is it because of the... You've been here for 20 years. All right. Yeah, got it. Hey folks, that's the main episode for this week.

Welcome to the outro with fun features for you such as help remembering this episode with a run back through the big takeaways. Takeaway number one, pangolins have spikes on their outsides and their insides in order to eat massive amounts of insects. Takeaway number two, we know so little about pangolins we might have discovered some new pangolin species in the process of busting poachers. Takeaway number three, we now believe pangolins did not play a role in transmitting COVID to humans. Takeaway number four, the country of Taiwan is a world leader in pangolin conservation. And then so many numbers, especially about the scales of pangolins and the species and

the evolutionary history and how pangolins live in our world today. Those are the takeaways, also I said that's the main episode because there's more secretly incredibly fascinating stuff available to you right now if you support this show at MaximumBun.org. Members are the reason this podcast exists, so members get a bonus show every week where we explore one obviously incredibly fascinating story related to the main episode. This week's bonus topic is Pangolin Diplomacy and the Pangolin Love Story inside of that. Visit sifpod.fund for that bonus show,

for a library of more than 19 dozen others, secretly incredibly fascinating bonus shows, and a catalog of all sorts of Max Fun bonus shows. It's special audio, it's just for members. Thank you to everybody who backs this podcast operation. Additional fun things, check out our research sources on this episode's page at maximumumFun.org. Key sources this week include a lot of amazing New York Times science writing and also poaching coverage,

including a piece for the Trilobites section by writer Darren N. Corvaya and a story all about poaching by journalist Rachel Neuer who specializes in that entire story in the world. Also a lot of helpful scientific information from BBC Discover Wildlife magazine, the Zoological Society of London, the Greater Vancouver Zoo, the National Geographic Channel, and a lot of write-ups of scientific studies, in particular from JSTOR Daily. There's a lot of great work being done at universities in China and also especially in Europe, like Ghent University in Belgium and Oxford University in the UK. That page also features resources such as native-land.ca.

I'm using those to acknowledge that I recorded this in Lenapehoking, the traditional land of the Munsee Lenape people and the Wappinger people, as well as the Mohican people, Skatigok people, and others. Also Katie taped this in the country of Italy, and I want to acknowledge that in my location, in many other locations in the Americas and elsewhere, Native people are very much still here. That feels worth doing on each episode, and join the free CIF discord where we're sharing stories and resources about Native people and life. There is a link in this episode's description to join the discord.

We're also talking about this episode on the discord. And hey, would you like a tip on another episode? Because each week I'm finding you something randomly incredibly fascinating by running all the past episode numbers through a random number generator. This week's pick is episode 90. That's about the topic of Worcestershire sauce. Fun fact there, Worcestershire sauce is considered a surprisingly good seasoning on cicadas. Speaking of eating insects, you can use it on cicadas.

So I recommend that episode. I also recommend my co-host Katie Goldin's weekly podcast Creature Feature about animals, science, and more. Anytime we do an animal and ZIF pod, it leads me to hopefully remind you how good Creature Feature is. Katie's amazing at talking about those. Our theme music is Unbroken, Unshaven by the BUDOS Band. Our show logo is by artist Burton Durand. Special thanks to Chris Souza for audio mastering on this episode. Extra extra special thanks go to our members.

And thank you to all our listeners. I am thrilled to say we will be back next week with more secretly incredibly fascinating So how about that? Talk to you then Maximum fun, a worker-owned network of artist-owned shows supported directly by you.