[HN Gopher] A mystery species was discovered in trafficked pango...
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A mystery species was discovered in trafficked pangolin scales
Author : benbreen
Score : 19 points
Date : 2023-09-26 04:27 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| darth_avocado wrote:
| It's so strange to me that capturing wild animals is the only way
| to go about it. If demand is so high, why are there no farms
| already? Instead of decimating the population, they'd help with
| conservation.
| farnsworth wrote:
| You can't just put wild animals behind a fence and expect them
| to live happily. Typically animals have had to be domesticated
| through generations of breeding before they can live in those
| conditions, and for certain animals, that just doesn't work for
| some reason. I think I read that the ancestor of the cow was
| genetically suited for domestication, but buffaloes are not.
|
| This site says that pangolins haven't survived in captivity
| https://www.ifaw.org/journal/faq-
| pangolins#:~:text=Pangolins....
|
| I'd compare this to the way that for some reason we just
| haven't figured out how to farm truffles. Even though they're
| extremely valuable, we can only find them growing wild.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| You may have read that in "Guns, Germs, and Steel" by
| Diamond, which is pop science but highly recommended.
|
| There's an additional distinction between animals that can be
| domesticated (grown on a farm) and tamed (born in the wild,
| brought into zoos).
|
| To be domesticated, an animal must have several compatible
| attributes:
|
| 1. Size - It's just not worth it to try to domesticate mice.
| It's barely worth it to domesticate rabbits. Today, we might
| domesticate pangolins, rabbits, rats, etc. because cuteness,
| charisma, or rare medical utility is now valuable enough to
| have someone specialize in, but you're not going to get the
| benefits of millenia of breeding the best sheep for
| domestication.
|
| 2. Temperament - An animal must be docile, able to be calm in
| reasonably close proximity to humans. Typically this means
| herding or flocking social herbivores, and not flighty,
| vicious ones.
|
| 3. Reproductive rate - If it's going to take multiple
| generations of farmers to grow one generation of Galapagos
| tortoises or elephants to maturity, you're not likely to have
| a self-sustaining farm. A breeding program over centuries
| becomes a civilization-level project, not a personal project.
|
| 4. Diet - Again, today we could hypothetically feed termite
| larvae to pangolins at comparatively great expense. But if
| you want millenia of breeding to improve your domestication
| progress, they're basically going to have to be willing to
| eat stuff that's easy to provide and that doesn't compete
| with human diets, such as grass.
|
| Buffalo are not suited to domestication because they fail
| criteria #2, unlike cows. Diamond argues that this failure is
| part of why the Europeans colonized the Americas rather than
| the other way around - Eurasia had horses, cows, sheep,
| goats, pigs, wheat, barley, rice, and more, the Americas had
| buffalo, llamas, deer, beans, and maize (the latter two being
| great grains in calories per acre, but not half as good as
| modern corn, and not easy to farm without draft animals).
| pvaldes wrote:
| > It's just not worth it to try to domesticate mice.
|
| We did it, and it was very profitable. Mice (and hamsters)
| are small animals that are really domesticated, selected
| and breed at a cosmopolitan level. Fishes are domesticated
| also. We can't domesticate too much big ones (Bigger than a
| killer whale is really difficult) but small ones, yes. We
| do it all the time.
|
| An animal don't need to be docile or calm to be breed in
| captivity. We domesticated bulls and selected them on
| purpose to be vicious. Tamed is not the same thing as
| domesticated.
| rob74 wrote:
| Wikipedia
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pangolin#Conservation) has
| more details:
|
| > _Many attempts have been made to breed pangolins in
| captivity, but due to their reliance on wide-ranging habitats
| and very particular diets, these attempts are often
| unsuccessful. Pangolins have significantly decreased immune
| responses due to a genetic dysfunction, making them extremely
| fragile. They are susceptible to diseases such as pneumonia
| and the development of ulcers in captivity, complications
| that can lead to an early death. In addition, pangolins
| rescued from illegal trade often have a higher chance of
| being infected with parasites such as intestinal worms,
| further lessening their chance for rehabilitation and
| reintroduction to the wild._
| [deleted]
| _hypx wrote:
| https://archive.ph/fHdzW
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| Interesting article. I wouldn't want to place bets on the long-
| term outlook of this M Mysteria given that the entire family is
| so endangered.
|
| The difficulties in distinguishing M Mysteria from other _Manis_
| species just stresses the folly that is categorization. Yes, it
| has genetic differences from previously seen family members /
| "known" species. But is that enough to make it a species all to
| its own? For a specimen that hasn't been seen in person, on what
| basis are we declaring it a separate species? Surely a genetic
| divergence isn't enough (article says you can't tell just by
| comparing the scales) - you'd have to study the specimens
| themselves, their behavior, see if they can breed, etc.
| jononomo wrote:
| > Using their genomes, the researchers were able to estimate
| that the armored animals diverged from other pangolin species
| "over five million years ago," said Hua-Rong Zhang, a
| conservation geneticist at Kadoorie Farm and Botanic Garden in
| Hong Kong and an author of the paper.
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