Good news for pangolins
January 6, 2024 3:20 PM Subscribe
Jesus, people, leave the pangolins and other kind-of-odd creatures be.
Did you know that rhino horn, tiger liver, and pangolin scales make you sterile and impotent? Totally true, pass it on.
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:40 PM on January 6 [14 favorites]
Did you know that rhino horn, tiger liver, and pangolin scales make you sterile and impotent? Totally true, pass it on.
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:40 PM on January 6 [14 favorites]
It's funny, the last good news pangolin story I saw was just days ago: The giant ground pangolin re-emerged in Kenya in 2018, the first time the scaly creature had been spotted in 47 years. And God knows, we are not oversupplied with pangolin good news. Also there was the discovery of a hitherto unknown ninth pangolin species via a DNA analysis of captured scales. Team Pangolin has a universal membership or so I would like to think.
posted by y2karl at 5:31 PM on January 6 [10 favorites]
posted by y2karl at 5:31 PM on January 6 [10 favorites]
Good. Now address demand as well as supply!
posted by lalochezia at 6:00 PM on January 6 [6 favorites]
posted by lalochezia at 6:00 PM on January 6 [6 favorites]
Thanks for sharing this excellent story!
posted by pangolin party at 6:02 PM on January 6 [8 favorites]
posted by pangolin party at 6:02 PM on January 6 [8 favorites]
"This is a guy who did ledgers for each shipment: profit, loss, who he paid, what purpose, where it went," says Carmody.Huge and takin notes on a criminal fuckin conspiracy.
"It's like you're reading an accountant's version of a criminal transaction. This evidence is overwhelming, linking these guys to multiple shipments of rhino horn, ivory and pangolin. Big Mac is a big deal. He's huge."
The only unsatisfactory aspect of this story is that it was necessary in the first place. Ugh. People.
posted by flabdablet at 9:44 PM on January 6
I thought this was going to be Monty Python.
And now, the news for gibbons...
posted by Cardinal Fang at 12:24 AM on January 7
And now, the news for gibbons...
posted by Cardinal Fang at 12:24 AM on January 7
Jesus, people, leave the pangolins and other kind-of-odd creatures be.
They'll all be gone from the wild soon, doomed by people who put them to traditional (wackadoodle) uses.
posted by pracowity at 5:37 AM on January 7 [1 favorite]
They'll all be gone from the wild soon, doomed by people who put them to traditional (wackadoodle) uses.
posted by pracowity at 5:37 AM on January 7 [1 favorite]
Not to downplay or dispariage the work done here and it is definitley good news. But ultimately the problem is that people believe in Traditional Chinese Medicine, or other "Traditional Medicines" in general with TCM being the worst offender.
We on the liberal and leftish side have a laudable desire not to be culturally obnoxious or imperialist or cheauvinist. And in the case ot TCM it's a misplaced urge. TCM must be stamped out. We must meet it with the maximum contempt and shut down anyone who tries to claim it's valid, or a legitimate cultural expression,
Like Homeopathy or Chiropractic it's a practice with negative value and it is our great mistake to try to be polite and sensitive and tolerate it when people try to talk about TCM in any context other than condemnation and mockery. There is no value there. There is nothing worthwhile. There is nothing worth preserving in TCM.
If it wasn't for the part where TCM involved mutilating and torturing the animals it isn't actively driving to extinction it would be merely an obnoxious bunch of bullshit and not require any special effort to eradicate or change. But it does, so there must be.
I will add that there is very little that is actually traditional about TCM. Prior to the 1950's there were multiple, competing, often wildly mutually incompatible, systems of folk superstition. It wasn't until Mao was faced with a shortage of real doctors that he had people synthisize a single "Traditional Chinese Medicine" out of those real folk traditions. The lack of real history behind TCM is evident when you remember that during the Cultural Revolution, a period when the Chinese Communist Party was doing its violent and murderous best to utterly eradicate actual Chinese culture, it promoted the fuck out of TCM.
As long as people believe in TCM then animals will be driven to extinction for it.
posted by sotonohito at 7:29 AM on January 8 [5 favorites]
We on the liberal and leftish side have a laudable desire not to be culturally obnoxious or imperialist or cheauvinist. And in the case ot TCM it's a misplaced urge. TCM must be stamped out. We must meet it with the maximum contempt and shut down anyone who tries to claim it's valid, or a legitimate cultural expression,
Like Homeopathy or Chiropractic it's a practice with negative value and it is our great mistake to try to be polite and sensitive and tolerate it when people try to talk about TCM in any context other than condemnation and mockery. There is no value there. There is nothing worthwhile. There is nothing worth preserving in TCM.
If it wasn't for the part where TCM involved mutilating and torturing the animals it isn't actively driving to extinction it would be merely an obnoxious bunch of bullshit and not require any special effort to eradicate or change. But it does, so there must be.
I will add that there is very little that is actually traditional about TCM. Prior to the 1950's there were multiple, competing, often wildly mutually incompatible, systems of folk superstition. It wasn't until Mao was faced with a shortage of real doctors that he had people synthisize a single "Traditional Chinese Medicine" out of those real folk traditions. The lack of real history behind TCM is evident when you remember that during the Cultural Revolution, a period when the Chinese Communist Party was doing its violent and murderous best to utterly eradicate actual Chinese culture, it promoted the fuck out of TCM.
As long as people believe in TCM then animals will be driven to extinction for it.
posted by sotonohito at 7:29 AM on January 8 [5 favorites]
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