Pangolin – The most trafficked animal!
The first thought that comes to our mind when we hear about animal trafficking is probably a huge animal like a Rhino or an Elephant and the illegal trade of ivory?
Get ready to be shocked! The most heavily trafficked animal in the world is only 30 cm to 100 cm in size.
Yes Pangolin is the most illegally traded animal in the world. These harmless ant eaters with 8 sub species live in… Sub Saharan Africa to southeast Asia .
These friendly little dragon look alikes live happily in trees or within burrows in the ground. Some species are nocturnal, sleeping in a curled ball during the day. While others like the long-tailed pangolin are more active in the day. Their great sense of smell makes it easy to hunt for their favourite meals-insects. these little guys are good swimmers too.
The mom pangolins carry their babies on their tails, keeping watch over their young ones for the first two years of their life.
All pangolin species have hard keratin scales on their entire body which are their source of defense against predators. All they have to do is curl up into a ball and then get oblivious to the world around them.
Sadly this defence mechanism makes them an easy pick for poachers. These mammals are smuggled for satisfying various odd consumer demands like pangolin blood, tails, meat, heads and even live animals!
However the most famous is their scales which are powdered to make Chinese medicines which are said to cure various ailments in humans.
Increasingly now, this poor animal is are also are considered as a delicacy, making it another major reason for it be trafficked.
Sadly within the last decade alone,around a million pangolins were poached giving them the first rank in trafficked animals taking it closer and closer to extinction by every passing day.
And we are close to loosing another creation of nature.Does it get us thinking? where are we heading? what is the future of the species other than humans?
We are continuously loosing the war against animal poaching.
Perhaps it’s time, we get thinking for a few moments every now and then? Perhaps we will listen a bit harder the next time we see statistics on the species the planet has lost forever. Because other species are declining and this is real. Perhaps this is what real mass extinctions look like from the inside and we being the masters of mass distinctions!
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