Nature Quest: The scaly strange thing
One fine morning the man came with his strange booty. He called it Bonrui -- forest ruhi fish.
I had never seen anything like this. Yes, it had the scales like a fish. Its whole body was covered in scales. But then it had four legs and a tail too. How could it be a fish then?
As I searched for an answer, the man freed the strange animal. It looked at us with its black unblinking eyes and then with total disregard for us started slowly moving around.
We noticed that it did not have any mouth as we are used to know. Rather it had a long, slender tongue like a snake which it started pushing out and in of a hole where its mouth should have been.
There was an ant colony in our garden. The Bonrui wondered towards it and started picking up the ants with its sleek tongue. Sometimes it would scratch open the colony with its sharp claws.
It took about 15 minutes to finish up the whole colony. Then the man neatly put the mysterious animal back in its wooden box and left.
Later I came to know that it was a pangolin, a kind of ant-eater.
It is the only mammal wholly covered in scales. When under threat it can coil itself and make itself invincible to predators.
With its extraordinarily long tongue which measures almost its body length, it draws up ants and termites from ant hills. Although it is a slow moving animal, it still needs about seven million ants and termites a year to survive. Since they have no teeth, they ingest small stones while sucking up insects. These stones then grind up the food.
These beautiful animals are becoming extinct in Bangladesh and elsewhere for two reasons -- hunting for meat and trafficking. Globally it is the most trafficked animal.
But in Bangladesh they are hunted for meat.
About two years back, I got a call from someone in Modhupur that a Garo man had caught a pangolin. Dr Anisuzzaman and I went there and found the poor animal tied to a tree. It was injured in its front feet. It looked scared.
The Garo man described how delicious its meat is and how they hunt it at night.
"But these days we hardy get them," the Garo said. "It's become so rare."
After much persuasion we convinced the man to hand the animal to us to be released in the forest. We took it to Nalitapbari and released it in the forest.
The animal was all rolled up when it put it on the ground. Then it slowly unwound and looked at us with its dreary eyes. Then it turned around and ran as best as it could into the forest.
I have no idea whether it survived. But it should have enough food in the forest. Pangolins actually play a vital role in maintaining forest health. They eat up the ants and fireflies and keep the trees healthy.
I imagine our pangolin is playing its role in the Nalitabari forest and that it has found a partner. We can only hope they will breed and keep the number up.
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