I really appreciate how in season 5, episode 9 of The Animal Turn Nina Jamal offered important context regarding the framework of One Health. I want to continue thinking about One Health. Specifically, I want to discuss how this framework, while incredibly important and promising, can run the risk of flattening out complexity and difference.
The theorist Nicole Shukin offers a crucial critique, not of One Health, but of a similar concept called “the global village.” The global village references a unified, interconnected, and whole world with a shared vulnerability. And while rightly pointing to crucial global interconnections, this concept, as Shukin notes, can run the risk of "smoothing over material differences and leveling all humans and animals within a shared state of vulnerability.” Shukin points out that in reality, humans and animals face differential vulnerabilities to disease and death along the lines of species, race, class, gender, nationality, etc.
As I consider pangolins, who are implicated in the global biosecurity threats of wildlife trafficking and COVID-19, I want to be mindful of complexity and of the ways in which different groups are differentially impacted by supposedly unifying threats.
Pangolins have been described as “the most heavily trafficked wild mammals globally.” They are illegally hunted and traded largely because their flesh is considered a delicacy in several south-east Asian countries, and because their scales are used in traditional Chinese medicine. Some researchers have suggested that pangolins, due in large part to the disease-fostering conditions of illegal trafficking, may have been intermediary hosts in the transmission of COVID-19 from animals to humans, though later studies have shown that this is unlikely. Regardless of the actual role that pangolins have played in the evolution of COVID-19, pangolins and east Asian people who consume them are among the main scapegoats for the global pandemic.
In thinking about pangolins, it’s important not to gloss over how east Asian folks have been unfairly blamed for the COVID-19 pandemic, in part because of their relationship to pangolins. Neoliberal and orientalist pandemic discourses pathologize cultural differences such as East Asian people’s perceived “unhygienic intimacy with animals [or] exotic taste for animals” such as pangolins or bats. These problematic tropes have helped to fuel increasing hate crimes against East Asian individuals and communities following the pandemic.
It's not entirely clear how pangolins themselves have been impacted by COVID-19. On the one hand, bans on trading and eating wild animals following the emergence of COVID-19 may have helped give pangolins a reprieve. However, there is evidence to suggest that increased human confinement, the reduction in conservation enforcement, and the limited mobility of researchers may have all served to increase the likelihood of trafficking pangolins in certain locations. It’s also possible that the association between pangolins and COVID-19 has led to their intensified persecution.
So, pangolins are clearly enmeshed in biosecurity issues and the dynamic interplay between speciesism and racism. But who are they?
Pangolins look like armored anteaters, or like four-legged pinecones with long tails, though they’re actually more closely related to the taxonomic order Carnivora which includes animals like cats and dogs. Their overlapping scales are made of keratin, which is the protein that helps form human hair, skin, and nails, and these scales protect most of their body.
There are eight species in total – ranging from vulnerable to extinction to critically endangered – and they live throughout the continents of Asia and Africa. There are important differences among the different species and populations – for example, some are primarily ground-dwellers while others are primarily arboreal – however, they all live predominantly on a diet of ants and termites. And pangolins have some fascinating characteristics to help them to meet their unique dietary needs. Pangolins have an incredible sense of smell that allows them to locate insect nests. They also have long, curved claws that are perfectly suited for digging into mounds, tree trunks, or logs.
Digging is such a fundamental part of their way of life, that in Cantonese, their name actually translates to “the animal that digs through the mountain.”
They have amazingly long, dexterous, sticky tongues that attach near their pelvis and that can be half the length of their head and body when fully extended. They also have special muscles in their mouths which prevent ants and termites from escaping after capture, as well as muscles to protect their eyes and nostrils from insects, making them insect-eating machines. In fact, it’s estimated that one adult pangolin can consume more than 70 million insects annually.
Because pangolins are solitary, mostly nocturnal, and somewhat shy, much is still unknown about them. But pangolin rescuers and rehabbers share intimate relationships with individual pangolins, and offer crucial insights into their unique personalities and lifeworlds. Such is the case with one particular pangolin named Stevie. Stevie was rescued from the illegal wildlife trade when he was only three or four months old, and he was brought to the Johannesburg Wildlife Vet to be cared for by an experienced wildlife rehabilitator. Upon his arrival, his quirky and tenacious personality became apparent. His carer refers to him as gassy, insistent, and strong, and they go on daily walks together to forage for termites. He rides on his human carer’s back, just like he would have with his pangolin mum, and he digs into termite nests that they come across with zest and enthusiasm. In a Dodo video, viewers can see only Stevie’s little belly and hind legs exposed, while the entire upper half of his body is totally engulfed in a termite nest, and he seems to be having the time of his life. One particularly endearing thing about Stevie is his penchant for rocks. He loves to play with them, and his carer makes sure that there is always one in his overnight crate.
Amanda (Mandy) Bunten-Walberg was a PhD Candidate at Queen's University's School of Environmental Studies where her research explored more-than-human ethics in contagious contexts through the case study of bats and COVID-19. In particular, Mandy is interested in how more-than-human ethics, critical race theory, queer theory, and biopolitical theory might guide humans towards developing more ethical relationships with bats and other (human and more-than-human) persons who are dominantly understood as diseased. Learn more about our team here.
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