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115 results for “aardwolf”
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Thanks to @rosaroja10 for compiling a list of software I didn't have in #FediverseIconography @ https://fediverse.wake.st
I added the following forks: #小森林 (aka #LittleForest, by @mashiro), #kmyblue (by @official), #Decodon (by @frequency), @catodon, #Chuckya (by https://wetdry.world)
...and then we got some new non-forks: #Aardwolf (by @banjofox2), @vidzy and finally @phanpy (which is a client not a server but I think that distinction is mostly meaningless for the purpose of this project) -
Thanks to @rosaroja10 for compiling a list of software I didn't have in #FediverseIconography @ https://fediverse.wake.st
I added the following forks: #小森林 (aka #LittleForest, by @mashiro), #kmyblue (by @official), #Decodon (by @frequency), @catodon, #Chuckya (by https://wetdry.world)
...and then we got some new non-forks: #Aardwolf (by @banjofox2), @vidzy and finally @phanpy (which is a client not a server but I think that distinction is mostly meaningless for the purpose of this project) -
Thanks to @rosaroja10 for compiling a list of software I didn't have in #FediverseIconography @ https://fediverse.wake.st
I added the following forks: #小森林 (aka #LittleForest, by @mashiro), #kmyblue (by @official), #Decodon (by @frequency), @catodon, #Chuckya (by https://wetdry.world)
...and then we got some new non-forks: #Aardwolf (by @banjofox2), @vidzy and finally @phanpy (which is a client not a server but I think that distinction is mostly meaningless for the purpose of this project) -
Thanks to @rosaroja10 for compiling a list of software I didn't have in #FediverseIconography @ https://fediverse.wake.st
I added the following forks: #小森林 (aka #LittleForest, by @mashiro), #kmyblue (by @official), #Decodon (by @frequency), @catodon, #Chuckya (by https://wetdry.world)
...and then we got some new non-forks: #Aardwolf (by @banjofox2), @vidzy and finally @phanpy (which is a client not a server but I think that distinction is mostly meaningless for the purpose of this project) -
The other day was Hyena Day, and so I turned people into yeens! Though it seems that Aardwolves were the popular vote that evening lmao~
All characters belong to their respective owners
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The dragons are a bit tired, but let's keep the dancing going!
Edit: I also had an old portrait with this same character
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Frédéric Delsuc: 5 convergent evolutions of ant (or termite) eating among mammals, including one hyena. Focus of his study is on anteaters and pangolins (a bit disappointed not to hear about aardwolf, the termite eating hyena). #SMBE2023
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[...]
as soon as the characters actually start having emotions and showing off their personality behind "what does the strange kid want here?", everything gets much better. But sadly this doesn't leave much time to actually show much of it, and the most emotional part was even done in a montage sequence.
So, yeah. Visuals and designs are great. If you like animal characters, you should watch it, maybe not in cinema, but in general.
Also:
SO much "youth slang" and SO many product placements! Camera zooms just to show off real life brand logos! 😅Most importantly:
Hannah the aardwolf girl/woman is SO cute, cool, awesome and attractive! I want more of her! She needs a bigger role!! But hey, OF COURSE hyenas are awesome! -
Welcome to 1995! 🌐 Dive into a text-based fantasy world where emojis are banned, but ASCII art reigns supreme. ✨ Navigate through exotic realms of boredom and "realistic" fake geographies, all while pretending this isn't just a glorified chat room for nostalgia addicts. 💾
https://www.aardwolf.com/ #1995nostalgia #ASCIIart #textbasedgaming #retrochatroom #fauxgeography #HackerNews #ngated -
Welcome to 1995! 🌐 Dive into a text-based fantasy world where emojis are banned, but ASCII art reigns supreme. ✨ Navigate through exotic realms of boredom and "realistic" fake geographies, all while pretending this isn't just a glorified chat room for nostalgia addicts. 💾
https://www.aardwolf.com/ #1995nostalgia #ASCIIart #textbasedgaming #retrochatroom #fauxgeography #HackerNews #ngated -
Welcome to 1995! 🌐 Dive into a text-based fantasy world where emojis are banned, but ASCII art reigns supreme. ✨ Navigate through exotic realms of boredom and "realistic" fake geographies, all while pretending this isn't just a glorified chat room for nostalgia addicts. 💾
https://www.aardwolf.com/ #1995nostalgia #ASCIIart #textbasedgaming #retrochatroom #fauxgeography #HackerNews #ngated -
Welcome to 1995! 🌐 Dive into a text-based fantasy world where emojis are banned, but ASCII art reigns supreme. ✨ Navigate through exotic realms of boredom and "realistic" fake geographies, all while pretending this isn't just a glorified chat room for nostalgia addicts. 💾
https://www.aardwolf.com/ #1995nostalgia #ASCIIart #textbasedgaming #retrochatroom #fauxgeography #HackerNews #ngated -
Does anyone play Text-based MUDs?
I tried to get into them a few years ago. I tried one or two but didn't hang in them for any real amount of time. They just seemed empty and like an abandoned part of the internet.
The site that ranks MUDs looks old as heck; realised some of the links are broken. There are hundreds tho.
This is apparently the most popular MUD: https://www.aardwolf.com/
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A list of animals who
The recent death of the great Jane Goodall brought me back to an old post about the use of who-pronouns with non-human animals, as in ‘swallows who flew past her window’, as opposed to ‘swallows that/which flew past her window’.
Goodall’s first scientific paper was returned to her with who replaced by which, and he or she replaced by it, in reference to chimpanzees. Goodall promptly reinstated her choice of pronouns, presumably seeing them as markers of the animals’ intrinsic value, and their substitution as an unwarranted moral demotion.1
Since then I’ve made note of other examples of animals who that I’ve read in books.2 This post compiles them in one place, where they form a kind of homemade menagerie of zoolinguistic solidarity. It extends, as we have seen, to swallows:
She watched the sudden, fast shadows of swallows who flew past her window in fleeting pairs, subtracting light from her room, and marvelled how living things could suspend themselves in mid-air. (Claire Keegan, ‘Men and Women’, in Antarctica)
And, from the same writer, sheep:
I sit by the window and keep an eye on the sheep who stare, bewildered, from the car.
Ducks:
‘At the place [. . .] where timid ducks, who must have been through some experiences in the ugly little gravel pool of the never-completed excavation, flew away from me . . . (Werner Herzog, Every Man for Himself and God Against All)
Cows:
I do not care for animals, except for cows, who combine supreme usefulness with a rustic kind of beauty. (Maeve Kelly, ‘The Sentimentalist’, in Orange Horses)
Kingfishers and otters:
In now distant days Iris used to return to Steeple Aston or Hartley Road full of her visit to them, and of what they had told her about their Welsh cottage, a converted schoolhouse. They told her of the pool they had built in the field behind it, the kingfishers and otters who came to visit there. (John Bayley, Iris: A Memoir of Iris Murdoch)
Rabbits:
Who was the more frightened between them? (Nicola Barker, Wide Open, when a woman is startled to meet a rabbit in a kitchen)
Tadpoles (first which, then who):
And we presented her with gallons of frogspawn which duly turned into tadpoles, which ate each other until there were just a few fat cannibal monsters left, all black belly and no sign of legs, who got poured down the sink. (Lorna Sage, Bad Blood)
Bonobos:
The researchers’ most spectacular success has been with Kanzi, a bonobo (a species closely related to chimpanzees) who apparently learned lexigrams spontaneously as an infant while watching his mother being trained. (Abby Kaplan, Women Talk More than Men: …And Other Myths about Language Explained)
Chimpanzees:
In the study by Hirata and Fuwa (2006), for example, chimpanzees who did not solicit other chimpanzees to engage in a group activity quite readily solicited a presumably more helpful human. (Michael Tomasello, Origins of Human Communication)
I make piles, like the chimp who thought he was a human. (Sara Baume, A Line Made by Walking)
Foxes:
And I look out for the fox, the fox who dropped me a rat. (Baume again)
Aardwolves and aasvogels (that’s right, aardwolves and aasvogels):
The aardvark is a peculiar African mammal whose equally peculiar double-A name has earned it its prestigious position as the first animal in the dictionary. Spare a thought, then, for its alphabetical next-door neighbours, the aardwolf and aasvogel, who are pipped into second and third place . . . (Paul Anthony Jones, Word Drops)
Horses:
But still they did not stop the mare, who cantered gaily onward. (Mary Lavin, ‘The Joy-Ride’, in In a Café)
It’s not just stallions who can become aggressive if they’re raised alone. (Temple Grandin and Catherine Johnson, Animals in Translation: Using the Mysteries of Autism to Decode Animal Behaviour)
Pigs:
The sides of the pen are solid, so the other pigs can’t reach their snouts inside and bite the tail or rear end of the pig who’s eating. (Grandin and Johnson again)
Animals generally:
All animals who live in groups – and that is most mammals – form dominance hierarchies. (Grandin and Johnson)
Consider, he [Michael Trestman] says, the category of animals who have complex active bodies. These are animals who can move quickly, and who can seize and manipulate objects. (Peter Godfrey-Smith, Other Minds: The Octopus and the Evolution of Intelligent Life)
If it is a number of animals who are being chased, and if the pack succeeds in surrounding them, then their mass flight turns into a panic, each of the hunted animals will try to escape on its own from the circle of its enemies. (Elias Canetti, Crowds and Power, translated from the German by Carol Stewart)
Wolves:
Wolves vary their hunting techniques, share food with the old who so not hunt, and give gifts to each other. (Barry Lopez, Of Wolves and Men)
A wolf who remains with his or her parents and helps raise their next litter is an alloparent. (Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson and Susan McCarthy’s When Elephants Weep: The Emotional Lives of Animals)
(Many different animals are treated thus in Moussaieff Masson and McCarthy’s book, but I neglected to keep track, aside from the example above.)
Dogs, of course, are often so honoured – the most frequently so of all the animals in Gilquin and Jacobs’s data set (footnote 1):
They could care less that I once had a dog named Woodsprite who was crushed by a backhoe. (George Saunders, ‘The 400-Pound CEO’, in CivilWarLand in Bad Decline)
The same thing applied to the first three time dogs, two of whom had actually been the favourites. (James Kelman, ‘A wide runner’, in Not Not While the Giro)
Most senses require two of things – eyes, ears, hands. But we only have one nose. This is, again, to stop us smelling dogs so much, who stink. (Philomena Cunk, Cunk on Everything: The Encyclopedia Philomena)
Molly Keane explicitly calls dogs people, in both The Rising Tide:
The only people to whom she was a little kind were her dogs and Diana.
and Loving and Giving:
The dogs loved him as he loved them. They flew to his beautiful whistle, even when on the hot line of a rabbit. Nettle, the Killer, a fierce opinionated person who would have been hero of a rat-pit had Silly Willie been sweeping chimneys, was, of the three, his favourite.
Nuala Ní Chonchúir, similarly, uses someone in reference to a dog in You:
Sinbad goes banana-boats when he sees you through the balcony door. [. . .] You kneel down on the rug and let him lick your nose with his smelly tongue. That’s how dogs kiss each other. Then you remember that they also lick each other’s bums, so you don’t let him do it any more. Still, at least someone’s glad to see you.
Even an ant can be ‘someone’:
Last week my little nephew said to his father: “Look, someone is walking under the table.” The father, thinking that his son had had a hallucination, looked under the table and saw – an ant! For the child, an ant was “someone.” I, too, have never doubted that I am one animal among others. (from ‘A Talk with Konrad Lorenz’, in In the Modern Idiom: An Introduction to Literature, ed. Leo Hamalian & Arthur Zeiger)
Rats:
The worst thing about rats, says Steve, ‘is waiting for that big wet slap on your back’. ‘No,’ says Kevin, ‘it’s knowing you’re being watched but not knowing who’s watching and from where.’ London’s sewer rats generally run away from humans. New York’s don’t. (Rose George, The Big Necessity: Adventures in the World of Human Waste)
If you thought rats were unexpected, try trees:
Mycorrhizal fungi have coevolved with trees, with whom they’ve worked out a mutually beneficial relationship in which they trade the products of their very different metabolisms. (Michael Pollan, The Omnivore’s Dilemma)
As soon as the bright sunlight increases the rate of photosynthesis and stimulates growth, the buds of those who have shot up receive more sugar. (The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben, translated from the German by Jane Billinghurst)
And rivers: I’ve yet to read Robert Macfarlane’s book Is a River Alive?, but I saw an excerpt that referred to meeting ‘a living, threatened river who flows from the roadless boreal forest to the sea’. These non-human, non-animal examples align with a movement to grant living systems legal rights – chiefly to protect them from destructive human action.
The menagerie could be greatly enlarged by adding examples from other sources: conversations, letters and emails, social media, the internet generally, language corpora, etc. But this thin slice is based solely on offline reading because that’s how I often pattern my notes.
Using who or personal pronouns is not something I do automatically when referring to animals. Sometimes which, that, or it seems more apt, or I could go either way, depending on context. In footnote 2 I instinctively used which in reference to sharks and decided to leave it be.
I’m sure my usage is inconsistent – it’s one of those grey areas in language that I find interesting. Maybe it’s something you’ve noticed in your own usage. In any case, it’s fun to see new animals join the who club (or the very important person club). All it needs now is some fungi and microbes.
*
1 I learned about this incident from Gaëtanelle Gilquin and George M. Jacobs’s paper ‘Elephants Who Marry Mice are Very Unusual: The Use of the Relative Pronoun Who with Nonhuman Animals’. It has lots of data-informed commentary and is well worth reading if this topic interests you.
2 Examples do occur in films and other media, naturally. There’s a fun one in Batman: The Movie (1966) when Batman, after being attacked by a shark, which then explodes, says at a press conference: ‘That was an unfortunate animal who chanced to swallow a floating mine.’ The DVD subtitles change the line, or I’d have included an image.
#anaphora #animals #birds #books #grammar #JaneGoodall #language #literature #nature #pronouns #relativePronouns #usage #which #who #writing
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A list of animals who
The recent death of the great Jane Goodall brought me back to an old post about the use of who-pronouns with non-human animals, as in ‘swallows who flew past her window’, as opposed to ‘swallows that/which flew past her window’.
Goodall’s first scientific paper was returned to her with who replaced by which, and he or she replaced by it, in reference to chimpanzees. Goodall promptly reinstated her choice of pronouns, presumably seeing them as markers of the animals’ intrinsic value, and their substitution as an unwarranted moral demotion.1
Since then I’ve made note of other examples of animals who that I’ve read in books.2 This post compiles them in one place, where they form a kind of homemade menagerie of zoolinguistic solidarity. It extends, as we have seen, to swallows:
She watched the sudden, fast shadows of swallows who flew past her window in fleeting pairs, subtracting light from her room, and marvelled how living things could suspend themselves in mid-air. (Claire Keegan, ‘Men and Women’, in Antarctica)
And, from the same writer, sheep:
I sit by the window and keep an eye on the sheep who stare, bewildered, from the car.
Ducks:
‘At the place [. . .] where timid ducks, who must have been through some experiences in the ugly little gravel pool of the never-completed excavation, flew away from me . . . (Werner Herzog, Every Man for Himself and God Against All)
Cows:
I do not care for animals, except for cows, who combine supreme usefulness with a rustic kind of beauty. (Maeve Kelly, ‘The Sentimentalist’, in Orange Horses)
Kingfishers and otters:
In now distant days Iris used to return to Steeple Aston or Hartley Road full of her visit to them, and of what they had told her about their Welsh cottage, a converted schoolhouse. They told her of the pool they had built in the field behind it, the kingfishers and otters who came to visit there. (John Bayley, Iris: A Memoir of Iris Murdoch)
Rabbits:
Who was the more frightened between them? (Nicola Barker, Wide Open, when a woman is startled to meet a rabbit in a kitchen)
Tadpoles (first which, then who):
And we presented her with gallons of frogspawn which duly turned into tadpoles, which ate each other until there were just a few fat cannibal monsters left, all black belly and no sign of legs, who got poured down the sink. (Lorna Sage, Bad Blood)
Bonobos:
The researchers’ most spectacular success has been with Kanzi, a bonobo (a species closely related to chimpanzees) who apparently learned lexigrams spontaneously as an infant while watching his mother being trained. (Abby Kaplan, Women Talk More than Men: …And Other Myths about Language Explained)
Chimpanzees:
In the study by Hirata and Fuwa (2006), for example, chimpanzees who did not solicit other chimpanzees to engage in a group activity quite readily solicited a presumably more helpful human. (Michael Tomasello, Origins of Human Communication)
I make piles, like the chimp who thought he was a human. (Sara Baume, A Line Made by Walking)
Foxes:
And I look out for the fox, the fox who dropped me a rat. (Baume again)
Aardwolves and aasvogels (that’s right, aardwolves and aasvogels):
The aardvark is a peculiar African mammal whose equally peculiar double-A name has earned it its prestigious position as the first animal in the dictionary. Spare a thought, then, for its alphabetical next-door neighbours, the aardwolf and aasvogel, who are pipped into second and third place . . . (Paul Anthony Jones, Word Drops)
Horses:
But still they did not stop the mare, who cantered gaily onward. (Mary Lavin, ‘The Joy-Ride’, in In a Café)
It’s not just stallions who can become aggressive if they’re raised alone. (Temple Grandin and Catherine Johnson, Animals in Translation: Using the Mysteries of Autism to Decode Animal Behaviour)
Pigs:
The sides of the pen are solid, so the other pigs can’t reach their snouts inside and bite the tail or rear end of the pig who’s eating. (Grandin and Johnson again)
Animals generally:
All animals who live in groups – and that is most mammals – form dominance hierarchies. (Grandin and Johnson)
Consider, he [Michael Trestman] says, the category of animals who have complex active bodies. These are animals who can move quickly, and who can seize and manipulate objects. (Peter Godfrey-Smith, Other Minds: The Octopus and the Evolution of Intelligent Life)
If it is a number of animals who are being chased, and if the pack succeeds in surrounding them, then their mass flight turns into a panic, each of the hunted animals will try to escape on its own from the circle of its enemies. (Elias Canetti, Crowds and Power, translated from the German by Carol Stewart)
Wolves:
Wolves vary their hunting techniques, share food with the old who so not hunt, and give gifts to each other. (Barry Lopez, Of Wolves and Men)
A wolf who remains with his or her parents and helps raise their next litter is an alloparent. (Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson and Susan McCarthy’s When Elephants Weep: The Emotional Lives of Animals)
(Many different animals are treated thus in Moussaieff Masson and McCarthy’s book, but I neglected to keep track, aside from the example above.)
Dogs, of course, are often so honoured – the most frequently so of all the animals in Gilquin and Jacobs’s data set (footnote 1):
They could care less that I once had a dog named Woodsprite who was crushed by a backhoe. (George Saunders, ‘The 400-Pound CEO’, in CivilWarLand in Bad Decline)
The same thing applied to the first three time dogs, two of whom had actually been the favourites. (James Kelman, ‘A wide runner’, in Not Not While the Giro)
Most senses require two of things – eyes, ears, hands. But we only have one nose. This is, again, to stop us smelling dogs so much, who stink. (Philomena Cunk, Cunk on Everything: The Encyclopedia Philomena)
Molly Keane explicitly calls dogs people, in both The Rising Tide:
The only people to whom she was a little kind were her dogs and Diana.
and Loving and Giving:
The dogs loved him as he loved them. They flew to his beautiful whistle, even when on the hot line of a rabbit. Nettle, the Killer, a fierce opinionated person who would have been hero of a rat-pit had Silly Willie been sweeping chimneys, was, of the three, his favourite.
Nuala Ní Chonchúir, similarly, uses someone in reference to a dog in You:
Sinbad goes banana-boats when he sees you through the balcony door. [. . .] You kneel down on the rug and let him lick your nose with his smelly tongue. That’s how dogs kiss each other. Then you remember that they also lick each other’s bums, so you don’t let him do it any more. Still, at least someone’s glad to see you.
Even an ant can be ‘someone’:
Last week my little nephew said to his father: “Look, someone is walking under the table.” The father, thinking that his son had had a hallucination, looked under the table and saw – an ant! For the child, an ant was “someone.” I, too, have never doubted that I am one animal among others. (from ‘A Talk with Konrad Lorenz’, in In the Modern Idiom: An Introduction to Literature, ed. Leo Hamalian & Arthur Zeiger)
Rats:
The worst thing about rats, says Steve, ‘is waiting for that big wet slap on your back’. ‘No,’ says Kevin, ‘it’s knowing you’re being watched but not knowing who’s watching and from where.’ London’s sewer rats generally run away from humans. New York’s don’t. (Rose George, The Big Necessity: Adventures in the World of Human Waste)
If you thought rats were unexpected, try trees:
Mycorrhizal fungi have coevolved with trees, with whom they’ve worked out a mutually beneficial relationship in which they trade the products of their very different metabolisms. (Michael Pollan, The Omnivore’s Dilemma)
As soon as the bright sunlight increases the rate of photosynthesis and stimulates growth, the buds of those who have shot up receive more sugar. (The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben, translated from the German by Jane Billinghurst)
And rivers: I’ve yet to read Robert Macfarlane’s book Is a River Alive?, but I saw an excerpt that referred to meeting ‘a living, threatened river who flows from the roadless boreal forest to the sea’. These non-human, non-animal examples align with a movement to grant living systems legal rights – chiefly to protect them from destructive human action.
The menagerie could be greatly enlarged by adding examples from other sources: conversations, letters and emails, social media, the internet generally, language corpora, etc. But this thin slice is based solely on offline reading because that’s how I often pattern my notes.
Using who or personal pronouns is not something I do automatically when referring to animals. Sometimes which, that, or it seems more apt, or I could go either way, depending on context. In footnote 2 I instinctively used which in reference to sharks and decided to leave it be.
I’m sure my usage is inconsistent – it’s one of those grey areas in language that I find interesting. Maybe it’s something you’ve noticed in your own usage. In any case, it’s fun to see new animals join the who club (or the very important person club). All it needs now is some fungi and microbes.
*
1 I learned about this incident from Gaëtanelle Gilquin and George M. Jacobs’s paper ‘Elephants Who Marry Mice are Very Unusual: The Use of the Relative Pronoun Who with Nonhuman Animals’. It has lots of data-informed commentary and is well worth reading if this topic interests you.
2 Examples do occur in films and other media, naturally. There’s a fun one in Batman: The Movie (1966) when Batman, after being attacked by a shark, which then explodes, says at a press conference: ‘That was an unfortunate animal who chanced to swallow a floating mine.’ The DVD subtitles change the line, or I’d have included an image.
#anaphora #animals #birds #books #grammar #JaneGoodall #language #literature #nature #pronouns #relativePronouns #usage #which #who #writing
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A list of animals who
The recent death of the great Jane Goodall brought me back to an old post about the use of who-pronouns with non-human animals, as in ‘swallows who flew past her window’, as opposed to ‘swallows that/which flew past her window’.
Goodall’s first scientific paper was returned to her with who replaced by which, and he or she replaced by it, in reference to chimpanzees. Goodall promptly reinstated her choice of pronouns, presumably seeing them as markers of the animals’ intrinsic value, and their substitution as an unwarranted moral demotion.1
Since then I’ve made note of other examples of animals who that I’ve read in books.2 This post compiles them in one place, where they form a kind of homemade menagerie of zoolinguistic solidarity. It extends, as we have seen, to swallows:
She watched the sudden, fast shadows of swallows who flew past her window in fleeting pairs, subtracting light from her room, and marvelled how living things could suspend themselves in mid-air. (Claire Keegan, ‘Men and Women’, in Antarctica)
And, from the same writer, sheep:
I sit by the window and keep an eye on the sheep who stare, bewildered, from the car.
Ducks:
‘At the place [. . .] where timid ducks, who must have been through some experiences in the ugly little gravel pool of the never-completed excavation, flew away from me . . . (Werner Herzog, Every Man for Himself and God Against All)
Cows:
I do not care for animals, except for cows, who combine supreme usefulness with a rustic kind of beauty. (Maeve Kelly, ‘The Sentimentalist’, in Orange Horses)
Kingfishers and otters:
In now distant days Iris used to return to Steeple Aston or Hartley Road full of her visit to them, and of what they had told her about their Welsh cottage, a converted schoolhouse. They told her of the pool they had built in the field behind it, the kingfishers and otters who came to visit there. (John Bayley, Iris: A Memoir of Iris Murdoch)
Rabbits:
Who was the more frightened between them? (Nicola Barker, Wide Open, when a woman is startled to meet a rabbit in a kitchen)
Tadpoles (first which, then who):
And we presented her with gallons of frogspawn which duly turned into tadpoles, which ate each other until there were just a few fat cannibal monsters left, all black belly and no sign of legs, who got poured down the sink. (Lorna Sage, Bad Blood)
Bonobos:
The researchers’ most spectacular success has been with Kanzi, a bonobo (a species closely related to chimpanzees) who apparently learned lexigrams spontaneously as an infant while watching his mother being trained. (Abby Kaplan, Women Talk More than Men: …And Other Myths about Language Explained)
Chimpanzees:
In the study by Hirata and Fuwa (2006), for example, chimpanzees who did not solicit other chimpanzees to engage in a group activity quite readily solicited a presumably more helpful human. (Michael Tomasello, Origins of Human Communication)
I make piles, like the chimp who thought he was a human. (Sara Baume, A Line Made by Walking)
Foxes:
And I look out for the fox, the fox who dropped me a rat. (Baume again)
Aardwolves and aasvogels (that’s right, aardwolves and aasvogels):
The aardvark is a peculiar African mammal whose equally peculiar double-A name has earned it its prestigious position as the first animal in the dictionary. Spare a thought, then, for its alphabetical next-door neighbours, the aardwolf and aasvogel, who are pipped into second and third place . . . (Paul Anthony Jones, Word Drops)
Horses:
But still they did not stop the mare, who cantered gaily onward. (Mary Lavin, ‘The Joy-Ride’, in In a Café)
It’s not just stallions who can become aggressive if they’re raised alone. (Temple Grandin and Catherine Johnson, Animals in Translation: Using the Mysteries of Autism to Decode Animal Behaviour)
Pigs:
The sides of the pen are solid, so the other pigs can’t reach their snouts inside and bite the tail or rear end of the pig who’s eating. (Grandin and Johnson again)
Animals generally:
All animals who live in groups – and that is most mammals – form dominance hierarchies. (Grandin and Johnson)
Consider, he [Michael Trestman] says, the category of animals who have complex active bodies. These are animals who can move quickly, and who can seize and manipulate objects. (Peter Godfrey-Smith, Other Minds: The Octopus and the Evolution of Intelligent Life)
If it is a number of animals who are being chased, and if the pack succeeds in surrounding them, then their mass flight turns into a panic, each of the hunted animals will try to escape on its own from the circle of its enemies. (Elias Canetti, Crowds and Power, translated from the German by Carol Stewart)
Wolves:
Wolves vary their hunting techniques, share food with the old who so not hunt, and give gifts to each other. (Barry Lopez, Of Wolves and Men)
A wolf who remains with his or her parents and helps raise their next litter is an alloparent. (Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson and Susan McCarthy’s When Elephants Weep: The Emotional Lives of Animals)
(Many different animals are treated thus in Moussaieff Masson and McCarthy’s book, but I neglected to keep track, aside from the example above.)
Dogs, of course, are often so honoured – the most frequently so of all the animals in Gilquin and Jacobs’s data set (footnote 1):
They could care less that I once had a dog named Woodsprite who was crushed by a backhoe. (George Saunders, ‘The 400-Pound CEO’, in CivilWarLand in Bad Decline)
The same thing applied to the first three time dogs, two of whom had actually been the favourites. (James Kelman, ‘A wide runner’, in Not Not While the Giro)
Most senses require two of things – eyes, ears, hands. But we only have one nose. This is, again, to stop us smelling dogs so much, who stink. (Philomena Cunk, Cunk on Everything: The Encyclopedia Philomena)
Molly Keane explicitly calls dogs people, in both The Rising Tide:
The only people to whom she was a little kind were her dogs and Diana.
and Loving and Giving:
The dogs loved him as he loved them. They flew to his beautiful whistle, even when on the hot line of a rabbit. Nettle, the Killer, a fierce opinionated person who would have been hero of a rat-pit had Silly Willie been sweeping chimneys, was, of the three, his favourite.
Nuala Ní Chonchúir, similarly, uses someone in reference to a dog in You:
Sinbad goes banana-boats when he sees you through the balcony door. [. . .] You kneel down on the rug and let him lick your nose with his smelly tongue. That’s how dogs kiss each other. Then you remember that they also lick each other’s bums, so you don’t let him do it any more. Still, at least someone’s glad to see you.
Even an ant can be ‘someone’:
Last week my little nephew said to his father: “Look, someone is walking under the table.” The father, thinking that his son had had a hallucination, looked under the table and saw – an ant! For the child, an ant was “someone.” I, too, have never doubted that I am one animal among others. (from ‘A Talk with Konrad Lorenz’, in In the Modern Idiom: An Introduction to Literature, ed. Leo Hamalian & Arthur Zeiger)
Rats:
The worst thing about rats, says Steve, ‘is waiting for that big wet slap on your back’. ‘No,’ says Kevin, ‘it’s knowing you’re being watched but not knowing who’s watching and from where.’ London’s sewer rats generally run away from humans. New York’s don’t. (Rose George, The Big Necessity: Adventures in the World of Human Waste)
If you thought rats were unexpected, try trees:
Mycorrhizal fungi have coevolved with trees, with whom they’ve worked out a mutually beneficial relationship in which they trade the products of their very different metabolisms. (Michael Pollan, The Omnivore’s Dilemma)
As soon as the bright sunlight increases the rate of photosynthesis and stimulates growth, the buds of those who have shot up receive more sugar. (The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben, translated from the German by Jane Billinghurst)
And rivers: I’ve yet to read Robert Macfarlane’s book Is a River Alive?, but I saw an excerpt that referred to meeting ‘a living, threatened river who flows from the roadless boreal forest to the sea’. These non-human, non-animal examples align with a movement to grant living systems legal rights – chiefly to protect them from destructive human action.
The menagerie could be greatly enlarged by adding examples from other sources: conversations, letters and emails, social media, the internet generally, language corpora, etc. But this thin slice is based solely on offline reading because that’s how I often pattern my notes.
Using who or personal pronouns is not something I do automatically when referring to animals. Sometimes which, that, or it seems more apt, or I could go either way, depending on context. In footnote 2 I instinctively used which in reference to sharks and decided to leave it be.
I’m sure my usage is inconsistent – it’s one of those grey areas in language that I find interesting. Maybe it’s something you’ve noticed in your own usage. In any case, it’s fun to see new animals join the who club (or the very important person club). All it needs now is some fungi and microbes.
*
1 I learned about this incident from Gaëtanelle Gilquin and George M. Jacobs’s paper ‘Elephants Who Marry Mice are Very Unusual: The Use of the Relative Pronoun Who with Nonhuman Animals’. It has lots of data-informed commentary and is well worth reading if this topic interests you.
2 Examples do occur in films and other media, naturally. There’s a fun one in Batman: The Movie (1966) when Batman, after being attacked by a shark, which then explodes, says at a press conference: ‘That was an unfortunate animal who chanced to swallow a floating mine.’ The DVD subtitles change the line, or I’d have included an image.
#anaphora #animals #birds #books #grammar #JaneGoodall #language #literature #nature #pronouns #relativePronouns #usage #which #who #writing
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A list of animals who
The recent death of the great Jane Goodall brought me back to an old post about the use of who-pronouns with non-human animals, as in ‘swallows who flew past her window’, as opposed to ‘swallows that/which flew past her window’.
Goodall’s first scientific paper was returned to her with who replaced by which, and he or she replaced by it, in reference to chimpanzees. Goodall promptly reinstated her choice of pronouns, presumably seeing them as markers of the animals’ intrinsic value, and their substitution as an unwarranted moral demotion.1
Since then I’ve made note of other examples of animals who that I’ve read in books.2 This post compiles them in one place, where they form a kind of homemade menagerie of zoolinguistic solidarity. It extends, as we have seen, to swallows:
She watched the sudden, fast shadows of swallows who flew past her window in fleeting pairs, subtracting light from her room, and marvelled how living things could suspend themselves in mid-air. (Claire Keegan, ‘Men and Women’, in Antarctica)
And, from the same writer, sheep:
I sit by the window and keep an eye on the sheep who stare, bewildered, from the car.
Ducks:
‘At the place [. . .] where timid ducks, who must have been through some experiences in the ugly little gravel pool of the never-completed excavation, flew away from me . . . (Werner Herzog, Every Man for Himself and God Against All)
Cows:
I do not care for animals, except for cows, who combine supreme usefulness with a rustic kind of beauty. (Maeve Kelly, ‘The Sentimentalist’, in Orange Horses)
Kingfishers and otters:
In now distant days Iris used to return to Steeple Aston or Hartley Road full of her visit to them, and of what they had told her about their Welsh cottage, a converted schoolhouse. They told her of the pool they had built in the field behind it, the kingfishers and otters who came to visit there. (John Bayley, Iris: A Memoir of Iris Murdoch)
Rabbits:
Who was the more frightened between them? (Nicola Barker, Wide Open, when a woman is startled to meet a rabbit in a kitchen)
Tadpoles (first which, then who):
And we presented her with gallons of frogspawn which duly turned into tadpoles, which ate each other until there were just a few fat cannibal monsters left, all black belly and no sign of legs, who got poured down the sink. (Lorna Sage, Bad Blood)
Bonobos:
The researchers’ most spectacular success has been with Kanzi, a bonobo (a species closely related to chimpanzees) who apparently learned lexigrams spontaneously as an infant while watching his mother being trained. (Abby Kaplan, Women Talk More than Men: …And Other Myths about Language Explained)
Chimpanzees:
In the study by Hirata and Fuwa (2006), for example, chimpanzees who did not solicit other chimpanzees to engage in a group activity quite readily solicited a presumably more helpful human. (Michael Tomasello, Origins of Human Communication)
I make piles, like the chimp who thought he was a human. (Sara Baume, A Line Made by Walking)
Foxes:
And I look out for the fox, the fox who dropped me a rat. (Baume again)
Aardwolves and aasvogels (that’s right, aardwolves and aasvogels):
The aardvark is a peculiar African mammal whose equally peculiar double-A name has earned it its prestigious position as the first animal in the dictionary. Spare a thought, then, for its alphabetical next-door neighbours, the aardwolf and aasvogel, who are pipped into second and third place . . . (Paul Anthony Jones, Word Drops)
Horses:
But still they did not stop the mare, who cantered gaily onward. (Mary Lavin, ‘The Joy-Ride’, in In a Café)
It’s not just stallions who can become aggressive if they’re raised alone. (Temple Grandin and Catherine Johnson, Animals in Translation: Using the Mysteries of Autism to Decode Animal Behaviour)
Pigs:
The sides of the pen are solid, so the other pigs can’t reach their snouts inside and bite the tail or rear end of the pig who’s eating. (Grandin and Johnson again)
Animals generally:
All animals who live in groups – and that is most mammals – form dominance hierarchies. (Grandin and Johnson)
Consider, he [Michael Trestman] says, the category of animals who have complex active bodies. These are animals who can move quickly, and who can seize and manipulate objects. (Peter Godfrey-Smith, Other Minds: The Octopus and the Evolution of Intelligent Life)
If it is a number of animals who are being chased, and if the pack succeeds in surrounding them, then their mass flight turns into a panic, each of the hunted animals will try to escape on its own from the circle of its enemies. (Elias Canetti, Crowds and Power, translated from the German by Carol Stewart)
Wolves:
Wolves vary their hunting techniques, share food with the old who so not hunt, and give gifts to each other. (Barry Lopez, Of Wolves and Men)
A wolf who remains with his or her parents and helps raise their next litter is an alloparent. (Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson and Susan McCarthy’s When Elephants Weep: The Emotional Lives of Animals)
(Many different animals are treated thus in Moussaieff Masson and McCarthy’s book, but I neglected to keep track, aside from the example above.)
Dogs, of course, are often so honoured – the most frequently so of all the animals in Gilquin and Jacobs’s data set (footnote 1):
They could care less that I once had a dog named Woodsprite who was crushed by a backhoe. (George Saunders, ‘The 400-Pound CEO’, in CivilWarLand in Bad Decline)
The same thing applied to the first three time dogs, two of whom had actually been the favourites. (James Kelman, ‘A wide runner’, in Not Not While the Giro)
Most senses require two of things – eyes, ears, hands. But we only have one nose. This is, again, to stop us smelling dogs so much, who stink. (Philomena Cunk, Cunk on Everything: The Encyclopedia Philomena)
Molly Keane explicitly calls dogs people, in both The Rising Tide:
The only people to whom she was a little kind were her dogs and Diana.
and Loving and Giving:
The dogs loved him as he loved them. They flew to his beautiful whistle, even when on the hot line of a rabbit. Nettle, the Killer, a fierce opinionated person who would have been hero of a rat-pit had Silly Willie been sweeping chimneys, was, of the three, his favourite.
Nuala Ní Chonchúir, similarly, uses someone in reference to a dog in You:
Sinbad goes banana-boats when he sees you through the balcony door. [. . .] You kneel down on the rug and let him lick your nose with his smelly tongue. That’s how dogs kiss each other. Then you remember that they also lick each other’s bums, so you don’t let him do it any more. Still, at least someone’s glad to see you.
Even an ant can be ‘someone’:
Last week my little nephew said to his father: “Look, someone is walking under the table.” The father, thinking that his son had had a hallucination, looked under the table and saw – an ant! For the child, an ant was “someone.” I, too, have never doubted that I am one animal among others. (from ‘A Talk with Konrad Lorenz’, in In the Modern Idiom: An Introduction to Literature, ed. Leo Hamalian & Arthur Zeiger)
Rats:
The worst thing about rats, says Steve, ‘is waiting for that big wet slap on your back’. ‘No,’ says Kevin, ‘it’s knowing you’re being watched but not knowing who’s watching and from where.’ London’s sewer rats generally run away from humans. New York’s don’t. (Rose George, The Big Necessity: Adventures in the World of Human Waste)
If you thought rats were unexpected, try trees:
Mycorrhizal fungi have coevolved with trees, with whom they’ve worked out a mutually beneficial relationship in which they trade the products of their very different metabolisms. (Michael Pollan, The Omnivore’s Dilemma)
As soon as the bright sunlight increases the rate of photosynthesis and stimulates growth, the buds of those who have shot up receive more sugar. (The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben, translated from the German by Jane Billinghurst)
And rivers: I’ve yet to read Robert Macfarlane’s book Is a River Alive?, but I saw an excerpt that referred to meeting ‘a living, threatened river who flows from the roadless boreal forest to the sea’. These non-human, non-animal examples align with a movement to grant living systems legal rights – chiefly to protect them from destructive human action.
The menagerie could be greatly enlarged by adding examples from other sources: conversations, letters and emails, social media, the internet generally, language corpora, etc. But this thin slice is based solely on offline reading because that’s how I often pattern my notes.
Using who or personal pronouns is not something I do automatically when referring to animals. Sometimes which, that, or it seems more apt, or I could go either way, depending on context. In footnote 2 I instinctively used which in reference to sharks and decided to leave it be.
I’m sure my usage is inconsistent – it’s one of those grey areas in language that I find interesting. Maybe it’s something you’ve noticed in your own usage. In any case, it’s fun to see new animals join the who club (or the very important person club). All it needs now is some fungi and microbes.
*
1 I learned about this incident from Gaëtanelle Gilquin and George M. Jacobs’s paper ‘Elephants Who Marry Mice are Very Unusual: The Use of the Relative Pronoun Who with Nonhuman Animals’. It has lots of data-informed commentary and is well worth reading if this topic interests you.
2 Examples do occur in films and other media, naturally. There’s a fun one in Batman: The Movie (1966) when Batman, after being attacked by a shark, which then explodes, says at a press conference: ‘That was an unfortunate animal who chanced to swallow a floating mine.’ The DVD subtitles change the line, or I’d have included an image.
#anaphora #animals #birds #books #grammar #JaneGoodall #language #literature #nature #pronouns #relativePronouns #usage #which #who #writing
-
A list of animals who
The recent death of the great Jane Goodall brought me back to an old post about the use of who-pronouns with non-human animals, as in ‘swallows who flew past her window’, as opposed to ‘swallows that/which flew past her window’.
Goodall’s first scientific paper was returned to her with who replaced by which, and he or she replaced by it, in reference to chimpanzees. Goodall promptly reinstated her choice of pronouns, presumably seeing them as markers of the animals’ intrinsic value, and their substitution as an unwarranted moral demotion.1
Since then I’ve made note of other examples of animals who that I’ve read in books.2 This post compiles them in one place, where they form a kind of homemade menagerie of zoolinguistic solidarity. It extends, as we have seen, to swallows:
She watched the sudden, fast shadows of swallows who flew past her window in fleeting pairs, subtracting light from her room, and marvelled how living things could suspend themselves in mid-air. (Claire Keegan, ‘Men and Women’, in Antarctica)
And, from the same writer, sheep:
I sit by the window and keep an eye on the sheep who stare, bewildered, from the car.
Ducks:
‘At the place [. . .] where timid ducks, who must have been through some experiences in the ugly little gravel pool of the never-completed excavation, flew away from me . . . (Werner Herzog, Every Man for Himself and God Against All)
Cows:
I do not care for animals, except for cows, who combine supreme usefulness with a rustic kind of beauty. (Maeve Kelly, ‘The Sentimentalist’, in Orange Horses)
Kingfishers and otters:
In now distant days Iris used to return to Steeple Aston or Hartley Road full of her visit to them, and of what they had told her about their Welsh cottage, a converted schoolhouse. They told her of the pool they had built in the field behind it, the kingfishers and otters who came to visit there. (John Bayley, Iris: A Memoir of Iris Murdoch)
Rabbits:
Who was the more frightened between them? (Nicola Barker, Wide Open, when a woman is startled to meet a rabbit in a kitchen)
Tadpoles (first which, then who):
And we presented her with gallons of frogspawn which duly turned into tadpoles, which ate each other until there were just a few fat cannibal monsters left, all black belly and no sign of legs, who got poured down the sink. (Lorna Sage, Bad Blood)
Bonobos:
The researchers’ most spectacular success has been with Kanzi, a bonobo (a species closely related to chimpanzees) who apparently learned lexigrams spontaneously as an infant while watching his mother being trained. (Abby Kaplan, Women Talk More than Men: …And Other Myths about Language Explained)
Chimpanzees:
In the study by Hirata and Fuwa (2006), for example, chimpanzees who did not solicit other chimpanzees to engage in a group activity quite readily solicited a presumably more helpful human. (Michael Tomasello, Origins of Human Communication)
I make piles, like the chimp who thought he was a human. (Sara Baume, A Line Made by Walking)
Foxes:
And I look out for the fox, the fox who dropped me a rat. (Baume again)
Aardwolves and aasvogels (that’s right, aardwolves and aasvogels):
The aardvark is a peculiar African mammal whose equally peculiar double-A name has earned it its prestigious position as the first animal in the dictionary. Spare a thought, then, for its alphabetical next-door neighbours, the aardwolf and aasvogel, who are pipped into second and third place . . . (Paul Anthony Jones, Word Drops)
Horses:
But still they did not stop the mare, who cantered gaily onward. (Mary Lavin, ‘The Joy-Ride’, in In a Café)
It’s not just stallions who can become aggressive if they’re raised alone. (Temple Grandin and Catherine Johnson, Animals in Translation: Using the Mysteries of Autism to Decode Animal Behaviour)
Pigs:
The sides of the pen are solid, so the other pigs can’t reach their snouts inside and bite the tail or rear end of the pig who’s eating. (Grandin and Johnson again)
Animals generally:
All animals who live in groups – and that is most mammals – form dominance hierarchies. (Grandin and Johnson)
Consider, he [Michael Trestman] says, the category of animals who have complex active bodies. These are animals who can move quickly, and who can seize and manipulate objects. (Peter Godfrey-Smith, Other Minds: The Octopus and the Evolution of Intelligent Life)
If it is a number of animals who are being chased, and if the pack succeeds in surrounding them, then their mass flight turns into a panic, each of the hunted animals will try to escape on its own from the circle of its enemies. (Elias Canetti, Crowds and Power, translated from the German by Carol Stewart)
Wolves:
Wolves vary their hunting techniques, share food with the old who so not hunt, and give gifts to each other. (Barry Lopez, Of Wolves and Men)
A wolf who remains with his or her parents and helps raise their next litter is an alloparent. (Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson and Susan McCarthy’s When Elephants Weep: The Emotional Lives of Animals)
(Many different animals are treated thus in Moussaieff Masson and McCarthy’s book, but I neglected to keep track, aside from the example above.)
Dogs, of course, are often so honoured – the most frequently so of all the animals in Gilquin and Jacobs’s data set (footnote 1):
They could care less that I once had a dog named Woodsprite who was crushed by a backhoe. (George Saunders, ‘The 400-Pound CEO’, in CivilWarLand in Bad Decline)
The same thing applied to the first three time dogs, two of whom had actually been the favourites. (James Kelman, ‘A wide runner’, in Not Not While the Giro)
Most senses require two of things – eyes, ears, hands. But we only have one nose. This is, again, to stop us smelling dogs so much, who stink. (Philomena Cunk, Cunk on Everything: The Encyclopedia Philomena)
Molly Keane explicitly calls dogs people, in both The Rising Tide:
The only people to whom she was a little kind were her dogs and Diana.
and Loving and Giving:
The dogs loved him as he loved them. They flew to his beautiful whistle, even when on the hot line of a rabbit. Nettle, the Killer, a fierce opinionated person who would have been hero of a rat-pit had Silly Willie been sweeping chimneys, was, of the three, his favourite.
Nuala Ní Chonchúir, similarly, uses someone in reference to a dog in You:
Sinbad goes banana-boats when he sees you through the balcony door. [. . .] You kneel down on the rug and let him lick your nose with his smelly tongue. That’s how dogs kiss each other. Then you remember that they also lick each other’s bums, so you don’t let him do it any more. Still, at least someone’s glad to see you.
Even an ant can be ‘someone’:
Last week my little nephew said to his father: “Look, someone is walking under the table.” The father, thinking that his son had had a hallucination, looked under the table and saw – an ant! For the child, an ant was “someone.” I, too, have never doubted that I am one animal among others. (from ‘A Talk with Konrad Lorenz’, in In the Modern Idiom: An Introduction to Literature, ed. Leo Hamalian & Arthur Zeiger)
Rats:
The worst thing about rats, says Steve, ‘is waiting for that big wet slap on your back’. ‘No,’ says Kevin, ‘it’s knowing you’re being watched but not knowing who’s watching and from where.’ London’s sewer rats generally run away from humans. New York’s don’t. (Rose George, The Big Necessity: Adventures in the World of Human Waste)
If you thought rats were unexpected, try trees:
Mycorrhizal fungi have coevolved with trees, with whom they’ve worked out a mutually beneficial relationship in which they trade the products of their very different metabolisms. (Michael Pollan, The Omnivore’s Dilemma)
As soon as the bright sunlight increases the rate of photosynthesis and stimulates growth, the buds of those who have shot up receive more sugar. (The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben, translated from the German by Jane Billinghurst)
And rivers: I’ve yet to read Robert Macfarlane’s book Is a River Alive?, but I saw an excerpt that referred to meeting ‘a living, threatened river who flows from the roadless boreal forest to the sea’. These non-human, non-animal examples align with a movement to grant living systems legal rights – chiefly to protect them from destructive human action.
The menagerie could be greatly enlarged by adding examples from other sources: conversations, letters and emails, social media, the internet generally, language corpora, etc. But this thin slice is based solely on offline reading because that’s how I often pattern my notes.
Using who or personal pronouns is not something I do automatically when referring to animals. Sometimes which, that, or it seems more apt, or I could go either way, depending on context. In footnote 2 I instinctively used which in reference to sharks and decided to leave it be.
I’m sure my usage is inconsistent – it’s one of those grey areas in language that I find interesting. Maybe it’s something you’ve noticed in your own usage. In any case, it’s fun to see new animals join the who club (or the very important person club). All it needs now is some fungi and microbes.
*
1 I learned about this incident from Gaëtanelle Gilquin and George M. Jacobs’s paper ‘Elephants Who Marry Mice are Very Unusual: The Use of the Relative Pronoun Who with Nonhuman Animals’. It has lots of data-informed commentary and is well worth reading if this topic interests you.
2 Examples do occur in films and other media, naturally. There’s a fun one in Batman: The Movie (1966) when Batman, after being attacked by a shark, which then explodes, says at a press conference: ‘That was an unfortunate animal who chanced to swallow a floating mine.’ The DVD subtitles change the line, or I’d have included an image.
#anaphora #animals #birds #books #grammar #JaneGoodall #language #literature #nature #pronouns #relativePronouns #usage #which #who #writing
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CW: Sexual themes
DID YOU KNOW THAT: Aardwolves have very long tongues? It's because they're insectivores! Don't tell me my comics aren't educational anymore. Three new pages of Travel Log, here:
https://www.furaffinity.net/view/60444374
#furry #furryart #furrycomics -
A piece I've been working on last week: a young wyvern. The fur pattern is inspired by aardwolves. Original: https://volpeon.ink/art/2026-young-wyvern/ #wyvern #vectorArt #furryArt #art
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A piece I've been working on last week: a young wyvern. The fur pattern is inspired by aardwolves. Original: https://volpeon.ink/art/2026-young-wyvern/ #wyvern #vectorArt #furryArt #art
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Temminck’s Pangolin Smutsia temminckii
Temminck’s Pangolin Smutsia temminckii
Vulnerable
Extant (resident): Angola; Botswana; Burundi; Central African Republic; Chad; Ethiopia; Kenya; Malawi; Mozambique; Namibia; Rwanda; South Africa; South Sudan; Sudan; Tanzania, United Republic of; Uganda; Zambia; Zimbabwe
Possibly Extant (resident): Congo
Possibly Extinct: Eswatini
The Temminck’s pangolin Smutsia temminckii is remarkable mammal. They are the second largest of the pangolin species and are reported to weigh between 12.5kg and 21 kilograms. They’re famous for their armour-like keratinous scales and their unique ability to curl into a protective ball when threatened. These elusive creatures are found in the savannahs and woodlands of sub-Saharan Africa and are essential to their ecosystem, controlling insect populations. The word pangolin comes from the Malay word “pengguling” meaning something that rolls up. Owing to their secretive nature and low densities, little is known about the pangolin. The species is killed primarily for Chinese medicine, even though their keratin scales have no medicinal value. All pangolins face a grave threat from trafficking for their meat and scales. Tragically, they are one of the most illegally traded mammals in the world.
Despite their ecological and cultural importance, Temminck’s pangolins are increasingly threatened by habitat destruction and illegal wildlife trade. Habitat loss from palm oil, cocoa and coffee agricultural expansion and mining further compounds their decline. Protect these unique creatures by boycotting palm oil and supporting strong anti-trafficking initiatives. #BoycottPalmOil #Boycott4Wildlife
The Temminck’s #pangolin is #vulnerable in Tanzania 🇹🇿 #Congo 🇨🇩 #Uganda 🇺🇬 from #poaching for their scales and meat along with #palmoil 🌴🤮 #tobacco 🚬🚭#deforestation. Help them survive when you #BoycottPalmOil 🌴🔥⛔️#Boycott4Wildlife @palmoildetect https://palmoildetectives.com/2021/08/21/temmincks-pangolin-smutsia-temminckii/
Share to BlueSky Share to TwitterRemarkable, secretive and gentle Temminck #Pangolins are living Poké Balls, who curl into a ball when threatened. They’re #vulnerable from the illegal #wildlife trade #palmoil and more. Help them #BoycottPalmOil 🌴🙊🔥☠️⛔️ #Boycott4Wildlife @palmoildetect https://palmoildetectives.com/2021/08/21/temmincks-pangolin-smutsia-temminckii/
Share to BlueSky Share to TwitterSpecies of pangolin are the most trafficked species in the world. Although deforestation is another major threat. The range of the Temminck’s Pangolins are increasingly threatened by shifting agriculture, small-holder farming and agro-industry farming. These farming practices are directly impacting pangolins through habitat loss and alteration, while the increased human presence in these previously undisturbed areas is resulting in increased levels of poaching.
IUCN Red List
Appearance and Behaviour
Temminck’s pangolins are medium-sized mammals with an average weight of 7–12 kg and a total length of approximately 90 cm, including their tail. Their overlapping, golden-brown scales, made of keratin (the same material as human fingernails), are a defining feature. These scales provide formidable protection against predators, allowing pangolins to roll into an impenetrable ball when threatened.
They are primarily nocturnal, foraging at night for ants and termites using their acute sense of smell. Their long, sticky tongues can extend deep into termite mounds, while their sharp claws are used to tear open nests. They exhibit a distinctive bipedal gait, walking on their hind legs while keeping their forelimbs off the ground.
A 2014 study revealed that Temminck’s pangolins exhibit home ranges that vary significantly based on habitat type, with individuals travelling several kilometres in search of food. This makes habitat loss and fragmentation particularly detrimental to their survival.
Threats
IUCN Status: Vulnerable
Illegal Wildlife Trade:
Temminck’s pangolins are heavily trafficked for their scales and meat, particularly for use in traditional Chinese medicine. Research indicates that their scales are wrongly believed to have healing properties, fuelling a devastating global black market.
Palm oil, tobacco and mining deforestation:
Agricultural expansion for palm oil, meat, tobacco and other commodities as well as mining destroys the habitats pangolins rely on. The savannahs and woodlands they inhabit are increasingly converted for human use.
Bycatch and Accidental Capture:
The 2014 study on anthropogenic threats found that Temminck’s pangolins are frequently killed accidentally in snares set for other wildlife. This unintended bycatch adds to their declining populations.
Climate Change:
Altered rainfall patterns and rising temperatures due to climate change, disrupt termite and ant populations, leading to reduced food availability for pangolins.
Low Reproductive Rates:
With only one offspring per year, Temminck’s pangolins are particularly vulnerable to population declines, as they cannot replenish their population quickly.
Geographic Range
Temminck’s pangolins inhabit sub-Saharan Africa, with populations found in South Africa, Namibia, Angola, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and Zambia. They thrive in savannahs and woodlands, favouring areas with abundant ant and termite populations.
Studies indicate their preference for regions with sandy soils, which make burrowing easier, and their dependence on undisturbed habitats highlights the critical need for protected areas. However, human activities increasingly encroach on these regions, limiting their available range.
Diet
Temminck’s pangolins are specialised insectivores, feeding almost exclusively on ants and termites. They consume millions of insects annually, making them essential for regulating insect populations and maintaining ecological balance.
Their foraging behaviour is influenced by the availability of prey, with pangolins often targeting specific ant and termite species. The destruction of termite mounds through land clearing and agriculture severely impacts their food sources, leading to nutritional stress.
Reproduction and Mating
Reproductive rates in Temminck’s pangolins are low, with females typically giving birth to a single offspring per year. After a gestation period of approximately 140 days, mothers care for their young by carrying them on their tails or backs. They often use the burrows of other animals including aardvarks and aardwolves.
The young pangolins’ soft scales harden within a few days of birth, providing protection. Maternal care is critical during the early months, as juveniles depend on their mothers for food and safety. Males do not participate in rearing the young, and populations are highly sensitive to poaching due to their slow reproductive cycles.
Human Perceptions of Temminck’s Pangolins
Temminck’s pangolins hold mixed perceptions among humans. A 2014 review of anthropogenic threats highlighted cultural beliefs in southern Africa where pangolins are revered as symbols of luck and rain. In contrast, others view them as commodities, hunted for their scales and meat.
The study also revealed that many rural communities are unaware of pangolins’ ecological importance in controlling insect populations. Conservation efforts are increasingly focused on educating these communities about the role pangolins play in maintaining ecosystem balance, with the goal of fostering coexistence and reducing poaching and exploitation.
Take Action!
Help protect Temminck’s pangolins by supporting organisations working to combat illegal wildlife trade and habitat destruction. Boycott palm oil and raise awareness of their plight. Use your voice to fight for their survival and ensure future generations can marvel at these extraordinary creatures. #BoycottPalmOil #Boycott4Wildlife
Support this beautiful animal
Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA)
Further Information
Pangolin Specialist Group. (n.d.). Temminck’s Pangolin. IUCN Pangolin Specialist Group.
Pietersen, D., Jansen, R. & Connelly, E. 2019. Smutsia temminckii. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2019: e.T12765A123585768. https://dx.doi.org/10.2305/IUCN.UK.2019-3.RLTS.T12765A123585768.en. Downloaded on 06 June 2021.
Pietersen, D., Jansen, R., Swart, J., Panaino, W., Kotze, A., Rankin, P., & Nebe, B. (2020). Temminck’s Pangolin (Smutsia temminckii). In Pangolins: Science, Society and Conservation. Biodiversity of the World: Conservation from Genes to Landscapes, 175–193.
Pietersen, D., McKechnie, A. E., & Jansen, R. (2014). A Review of the Anthropogenic Threats Faced by Temminck’s Ground Pangolin, Smutsia temminckii, in Southern Africa. South African Journal of Wildlife Research, 44(2), 167–178.
Sabashau, K., Utete, B., Madlamoto, D., Ngwenya, N., & Madamombe, H. (2024). Ecology, Status, and Distribution of Temminck’s Pangolin (Smutsia temminckii) in Hwange National Park. Wildlife Letters, 2(17–22).
Temminck’s Pangolin Smutsia temminckii
How can I help the #Boycott4Wildlife?
Take Action in Five Ways
1. Join the #Boycott4Wildlife on social media and subscribe to stay in the loop: Share posts from this website to your own network on Twitter, Mastadon, Instagram, Facebook and Youtube using the hashtags #Boycottpalmoil #Boycott4Wildlife.
Enter your email address
Sign Up
Join 1,396 other subscribers2. Contribute stories: Academics, conservationists, scientists, indigenous rights advocates and animal rights advocates working to expose the corruption of the palm oil industry or to save animals can contribute stories to the website.
Mel Lumby: Dedicated Devotee to Borneo’s Living Beings
Anthropologist and Author Dr Sophie Chao
Health Physician Dr Evan Allen
The World’s Most Loved Cup: A Social, Ethical & Environmental History of Coffee by Aviary Doert
How do we stop the world’s ecosystems from going into a death spiral? A #SteadyState Economy
3. Supermarket sleuthing: Next time you’re in the supermarket, take photos of products containing palm oil. Share these to social media along with the hashtags to call out the greenwashing and ecocide of the brands who use palm oil. You can also take photos of palm oil free products and congratulate brands when they go palm oil free.
https://twitter.com/CuriousApe4/status/1526136783557529600?s=20
https://twitter.com/PhillDixon1/status/1749010345555788144?s=20
https://twitter.com/mugabe139/status/1678027567977078784?s=20
4. Take to the streets: Get in touch with Palm Oil Detectives to find out more.
5. Donate: Make a one-off or monthly donation to Palm Oil Detectives as a way of saying thank you and to help pay for ongoing running costs of the website and social media campaigns. Donate here
Pledge your support#Africa #Angola #Botswana #Boycott4wildlife #BoycottPalmOil #Congo #Ethiopia #Kenya #Mammal #palmoil #pangolin #Pangolins #poaching #pokemon #pokemons #Rwanda #SouthAfrica #TemminckSPangolinSmutsiaTemminckii #tobacco #Uganda #vulnerable #VulnerableSpecies #wildlife
-
Temminck’s Pangolin Smutsia temminckii
Temminck’s Pangolin Smutsia temminckii
Vulnerable
Extant (resident): Angola; Botswana; Burundi; Central African Republic; Chad; Ethiopia; Kenya; Malawi; Mozambique; Namibia; Rwanda; South Africa; South Sudan; Sudan; Tanzania, United Republic of; Uganda; Zambia; Zimbabwe
Possibly Extant (resident): Congo
Possibly Extinct: Eswatini
The Temminck’s pangolin Smutsia temminckii is remarkable mammal. They are the second largest of the pangolin species and are reported to weigh between 12.5kg and 21 kilograms. They’re famous for their armour-like keratinous scales and their unique ability to curl into a protective ball when threatened. These elusive creatures are found in the savannahs and woodlands of sub-Saharan Africa and are essential to their ecosystem, controlling insect populations. The word pangolin comes from the Malay word “pengguling” meaning something that rolls up. Owing to their secretive nature and low densities, little is known about the pangolin. The species is killed primarily for Chinese medicine, even though their keratin scales have no medicinal value. All pangolins face a grave threat from trafficking for their meat and scales. Tragically, they are one of the most illegally traded mammals in the world.
Despite their ecological and cultural importance, Temminck’s pangolins are increasingly threatened by habitat destruction and illegal wildlife trade. Habitat loss from palm oil, cocoa and coffee agricultural expansion and mining further compounds their decline. Protect these unique creatures by boycotting palm oil and supporting strong anti-trafficking initiatives. #BoycottPalmOil #Boycott4Wildlife
The Temminck’s #pangolin is #vulnerable in Tanzania 🇹🇿 #Congo 🇨🇩 #Uganda 🇺🇬 from #poaching for their scales and meat along with #palmoil 🌴🤮 #tobacco 🚬🚭#deforestation. Help them survive when you #BoycottPalmOil 🌴🔥⛔️#Boycott4Wildlife @palmoildetect https://palmoildetectives.com/2021/08/21/temmincks-pangolin-smutsia-temminckii/
Share to BlueSky Share to TwitterRemarkable, secretive and gentle Temminck #Pangolins are living Poké Balls, who curl into a ball when threatened. They’re #vulnerable from the illegal #wildlife trade #palmoil and more. Help them #BoycottPalmOil 🌴🙊🔥☠️⛔️ #Boycott4Wildlife @palmoildetect https://palmoildetectives.com/2021/08/21/temmincks-pangolin-smutsia-temminckii/
Share to BlueSky Share to TwitterSpecies of pangolin are the most trafficked species in the world. Although deforestation is another major threat. The range of the Temminck’s Pangolins are increasingly threatened by shifting agriculture, small-holder farming and agro-industry farming. These farming practices are directly impacting pangolins through habitat loss and alteration, while the increased human presence in these previously undisturbed areas is resulting in increased levels of poaching.
IUCN Red List
Appearance and Behaviour
Temminck’s pangolins are medium-sized mammals with an average weight of 7–12 kg and a total length of approximately 90 cm, including their tail. Their overlapping, golden-brown scales, made of keratin (the same material as human fingernails), are a defining feature. These scales provide formidable protection against predators, allowing pangolins to roll into an impenetrable ball when threatened.
They are primarily nocturnal, foraging at night for ants and termites using their acute sense of smell. Their long, sticky tongues can extend deep into termite mounds, while their sharp claws are used to tear open nests. They exhibit a distinctive bipedal gait, walking on their hind legs while keeping their forelimbs off the ground.
A 2014 study revealed that Temminck’s pangolins exhibit home ranges that vary significantly based on habitat type, with individuals travelling several kilometres in search of food. This makes habitat loss and fragmentation particularly detrimental to their survival.
Threats
IUCN Status: Vulnerable
Illegal Wildlife Trade:
Temminck’s pangolins are heavily trafficked for their scales and meat, particularly for use in traditional Chinese medicine. Research indicates that their scales are wrongly believed to have healing properties, fuelling a devastating global black market.
Palm oil, tobacco and mining deforestation:
Agricultural expansion for palm oil, meat, tobacco and other commodities as well as mining destroys the habitats pangolins rely on. The savannahs and woodlands they inhabit are increasingly converted for human use.
Bycatch and Accidental Capture:
The 2014 study on anthropogenic threats found that Temminck’s pangolins are frequently killed accidentally in snares set for other wildlife. This unintended bycatch adds to their declining populations.
Climate Change:
Altered rainfall patterns and rising temperatures due to climate change, disrupt termite and ant populations, leading to reduced food availability for pangolins.
Low Reproductive Rates:
With only one offspring per year, Temminck’s pangolins are particularly vulnerable to population declines, as they cannot replenish their population quickly.
Geographic Range
Temminck’s pangolins inhabit sub-Saharan Africa, with populations found in South Africa, Namibia, Angola, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and Zambia. They thrive in savannahs and woodlands, favouring areas with abundant ant and termite populations.
Studies indicate their preference for regions with sandy soils, which make burrowing easier, and their dependence on undisturbed habitats highlights the critical need for protected areas. However, human activities increasingly encroach on these regions, limiting their available range.
Diet
Temminck’s pangolins are specialised insectivores, feeding almost exclusively on ants and termites. They consume millions of insects annually, making them essential for regulating insect populations and maintaining ecological balance.
Their foraging behaviour is influenced by the availability of prey, with pangolins often targeting specific ant and termite species. The destruction of termite mounds through land clearing and agriculture severely impacts their food sources, leading to nutritional stress.
Reproduction and Mating
Reproductive rates in Temminck’s pangolins are low, with females typically giving birth to a single offspring per year. After a gestation period of approximately 140 days, mothers care for their young by carrying them on their tails or backs. They often use the burrows of other animals including aardvarks and aardwolves.
The young pangolins’ soft scales harden within a few days of birth, providing protection. Maternal care is critical during the early months, as juveniles depend on their mothers for food and safety. Males do not participate in rearing the young, and populations are highly sensitive to poaching due to their slow reproductive cycles.
Human Perceptions of Temminck’s Pangolins
Temminck’s pangolins hold mixed perceptions among humans. A 2014 review of anthropogenic threats highlighted cultural beliefs in southern Africa where pangolins are revered as symbols of luck and rain. In contrast, others view them as commodities, hunted for their scales and meat.
The study also revealed that many rural communities are unaware of pangolins’ ecological importance in controlling insect populations. Conservation efforts are increasingly focused on educating these communities about the role pangolins play in maintaining ecosystem balance, with the goal of fostering coexistence and reducing poaching and exploitation.
Take Action!
Help protect Temminck’s pangolins by supporting organisations working to combat illegal wildlife trade and habitat destruction. Boycott palm oil and raise awareness of their plight. Use your voice to fight for their survival and ensure future generations can marvel at these extraordinary creatures. #BoycottPalmOil #Boycott4Wildlife
Support this beautiful animal
Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA)
Further Information
Pangolin Specialist Group. (n.d.). Temminck’s Pangolin. IUCN Pangolin Specialist Group.
Pietersen, D., Jansen, R. & Connelly, E. 2019. Smutsia temminckii. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2019: e.T12765A123585768. https://dx.doi.org/10.2305/IUCN.UK.2019-3.RLTS.T12765A123585768.en. Downloaded on 06 June 2021.
Pietersen, D., Jansen, R., Swart, J., Panaino, W., Kotze, A., Rankin, P., & Nebe, B. (2020). Temminck’s Pangolin (Smutsia temminckii). In Pangolins: Science, Society and Conservation. Biodiversity of the World: Conservation from Genes to Landscapes, 175–193.
Pietersen, D., McKechnie, A. E., & Jansen, R. (2014). A Review of the Anthropogenic Threats Faced by Temminck’s Ground Pangolin, Smutsia temminckii, in Southern Africa. South African Journal of Wildlife Research, 44(2), 167–178.
Sabashau, K., Utete, B., Madlamoto, D., Ngwenya, N., & Madamombe, H. (2024). Ecology, Status, and Distribution of Temminck’s Pangolin (Smutsia temminckii) in Hwange National Park. Wildlife Letters, 2(17–22).
Temminck’s Pangolin Smutsia temminckii
How can I help the #Boycott4Wildlife?
Take Action in Five Ways
1. Join the #Boycott4Wildlife on social media and subscribe to stay in the loop: Share posts from this website to your own network on Twitter, Mastadon, Instagram, Facebook and Youtube using the hashtags #Boycottpalmoil #Boycott4Wildlife.
Enter your email address
Sign Up
Join 1,396 other subscribers2. Contribute stories: Academics, conservationists, scientists, indigenous rights advocates and animal rights advocates working to expose the corruption of the palm oil industry or to save animals can contribute stories to the website.
Mel Lumby: Dedicated Devotee to Borneo’s Living Beings
Anthropologist and Author Dr Sophie Chao
Health Physician Dr Evan Allen
The World’s Most Loved Cup: A Social, Ethical & Environmental History of Coffee by Aviary Doert
How do we stop the world’s ecosystems from going into a death spiral? A #SteadyState Economy
3. Supermarket sleuthing: Next time you’re in the supermarket, take photos of products containing palm oil. Share these to social media along with the hashtags to call out the greenwashing and ecocide of the brands who use palm oil. You can also take photos of palm oil free products and congratulate brands when they go palm oil free.
https://twitter.com/CuriousApe4/status/1526136783557529600?s=20
https://twitter.com/PhillDixon1/status/1749010345555788144?s=20
https://twitter.com/mugabe139/status/1678027567977078784?s=20
4. Take to the streets: Get in touch with Palm Oil Detectives to find out more.
5. Donate: Make a one-off or monthly donation to Palm Oil Detectives as a way of saying thank you and to help pay for ongoing running costs of the website and social media campaigns. Donate here
Pledge your support#Africa #Angola #Botswana #Boycott4wildlife #BoycottPalmOil #Congo #Ethiopia #Kenya #Mammal #palmoil #pangolin #Pangolins #poaching #pokemon #pokemons #Rwanda #SouthAfrica #TemminckSPangolinSmutsiaTemminckii #tobacco #Uganda #vulnerable #VulnerableSpecies #wildlife
-
Temminck’s Pangolin Smutsia temminckii
Temminck’s Pangolin Smutsia temminckii
Vulnerable
Extant (resident): Angola; Botswana; Burundi; Central African Republic; Chad; Ethiopia; Kenya; Malawi; Mozambique; Namibia; Rwanda; South Africa; South Sudan; Sudan; Tanzania, United Republic of; Uganda; Zambia; Zimbabwe
Possibly Extant (resident): Congo
Possibly Extinct: Eswatini
The Temminck’s pangolin Smutsia temminckii is remarkable mammal. They are the second largest of the pangolin species and are reported to weigh between 12.5kg and 21 kilograms. They’re famous for their armour-like keratinous scales and their unique ability to curl into a protective ball when threatened. These elusive creatures are found in the savannahs and woodlands of sub-Saharan Africa and are essential to their ecosystem, controlling insect populations. The word pangolin comes from the Malay word “pengguling” meaning something that rolls up. Owing to their secretive nature and low densities, little is known about the pangolin. The species is killed primarily for Chinese medicine, even though their keratin scales have no medicinal value. All pangolins face a grave threat from trafficking for their meat and scales. Tragically, they are one of the most illegally traded mammals in the world.
Despite their ecological and cultural importance, Temminck’s pangolins are increasingly threatened by habitat destruction and illegal wildlife trade. Habitat loss from palm oil, cocoa and coffee agricultural expansion and mining further compounds their decline. Protect these unique creatures by boycotting palm oil and supporting strong anti-trafficking initiatives. #BoycottPalmOil #Boycott4Wildlife
The Temminck’s #pangolin is #vulnerable in Tanzania 🇹🇿 #Congo 🇨🇩 #Uganda 🇺🇬 from #poaching for their scales and meat along with #palmoil 🌴🤮 #tobacco 🚬🚭#deforestation. Help them survive when you #BoycottPalmOil 🌴🔥⛔️#Boycott4Wildlife @palmoildetect https://palmoildetectives.com/2021/08/21/temmincks-pangolin-smutsia-temminckii/
Share to BlueSky Share to TwitterRemarkable, secretive and gentle Temminck #Pangolins are living Poké Balls, who curl into a ball when threatened. They’re #vulnerable from the illegal #wildlife trade #palmoil and more. Help them #BoycottPalmOil 🌴🙊🔥☠️⛔️ #Boycott4Wildlife @palmoildetect https://palmoildetectives.com/2021/08/21/temmincks-pangolin-smutsia-temminckii/
Share to BlueSky Share to TwitterSpecies of pangolin are the most trafficked species in the world. Although deforestation is another major threat. The range of the Temminck’s Pangolins are increasingly threatened by shifting agriculture, small-holder farming and agro-industry farming. These farming practices are directly impacting pangolins through habitat loss and alteration, while the increased human presence in these previously undisturbed areas is resulting in increased levels of poaching.
IUCN Red List
Appearance and Behaviour
Temminck’s pangolins are medium-sized mammals with an average weight of 7–12 kg and a total length of approximately 90 cm, including their tail. Their overlapping, golden-brown scales, made of keratin (the same material as human fingernails), are a defining feature. These scales provide formidable protection against predators, allowing pangolins to roll into an impenetrable ball when threatened.
They are primarily nocturnal, foraging at night for ants and termites using their acute sense of smell. Their long, sticky tongues can extend deep into termite mounds, while their sharp claws are used to tear open nests. They exhibit a distinctive bipedal gait, walking on their hind legs while keeping their forelimbs off the ground.
A 2014 study revealed that Temminck’s pangolins exhibit home ranges that vary significantly based on habitat type, with individuals travelling several kilometres in search of food. This makes habitat loss and fragmentation particularly detrimental to their survival.
Threats
IUCN Status: Vulnerable
Illegal Wildlife Trade:
Temminck’s pangolins are heavily trafficked for their scales and meat, particularly for use in traditional Chinese medicine. Research indicates that their scales are wrongly believed to have healing properties, fuelling a devastating global black market.
Palm oil, tobacco and mining deforestation:
Agricultural expansion for palm oil, meat, tobacco and other commodities as well as mining destroys the habitats pangolins rely on. The savannahs and woodlands they inhabit are increasingly converted for human use.
Bycatch and Accidental Capture:
The 2014 study on anthropogenic threats found that Temminck’s pangolins are frequently killed accidentally in snares set for other wildlife. This unintended bycatch adds to their declining populations.
Climate Change:
Altered rainfall patterns and rising temperatures due to climate change, disrupt termite and ant populations, leading to reduced food availability for pangolins.
Low Reproductive Rates:
With only one offspring per year, Temminck’s pangolins are particularly vulnerable to population declines, as they cannot replenish their population quickly.
Geographic Range
Temminck’s pangolins inhabit sub-Saharan Africa, with populations found in South Africa, Namibia, Angola, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and Zambia. They thrive in savannahs and woodlands, favouring areas with abundant ant and termite populations.
Studies indicate their preference for regions with sandy soils, which make burrowing easier, and their dependence on undisturbed habitats highlights the critical need for protected areas. However, human activities increasingly encroach on these regions, limiting their available range.
Diet
Temminck’s pangolins are specialised insectivores, feeding almost exclusively on ants and termites. They consume millions of insects annually, making them essential for regulating insect populations and maintaining ecological balance.
Their foraging behaviour is influenced by the availability of prey, with pangolins often targeting specific ant and termite species. The destruction of termite mounds through land clearing and agriculture severely impacts their food sources, leading to nutritional stress.
Reproduction and Mating
Reproductive rates in Temminck’s pangolins are low, with females typically giving birth to a single offspring per year. After a gestation period of approximately 140 days, mothers care for their young by carrying them on their tails or backs. They often use the burrows of other animals including aardvarks and aardwolves.
The young pangolins’ soft scales harden within a few days of birth, providing protection. Maternal care is critical during the early months, as juveniles depend on their mothers for food and safety. Males do not participate in rearing the young, and populations are highly sensitive to poaching due to their slow reproductive cycles.
Human Perceptions of Temminck’s Pangolins
Temminck’s pangolins hold mixed perceptions among humans. A 2014 review of anthropogenic threats highlighted cultural beliefs in southern Africa where pangolins are revered as symbols of luck and rain. In contrast, others view them as commodities, hunted for their scales and meat.
The study also revealed that many rural communities are unaware of pangolins’ ecological importance in controlling insect populations. Conservation efforts are increasingly focused on educating these communities about the role pangolins play in maintaining ecosystem balance, with the goal of fostering coexistence and reducing poaching and exploitation.
Take Action!
Help protect Temminck’s pangolins by supporting organisations working to combat illegal wildlife trade and habitat destruction. Boycott palm oil and raise awareness of their plight. Use your voice to fight for their survival and ensure future generations can marvel at these extraordinary creatures. #BoycottPalmOil #Boycott4Wildlife
Support this beautiful animal
Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA)
Further Information
Pangolin Specialist Group. (n.d.). Temminck’s Pangolin. IUCN Pangolin Specialist Group.
Pietersen, D., Jansen, R. & Connelly, E. 2019. Smutsia temminckii. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2019: e.T12765A123585768. https://dx.doi.org/10.2305/IUCN.UK.2019-3.RLTS.T12765A123585768.en. Downloaded on 06 June 2021.
Pietersen, D., Jansen, R., Swart, J., Panaino, W., Kotze, A., Rankin, P., & Nebe, B. (2020). Temminck’s Pangolin (Smutsia temminckii). In Pangolins: Science, Society and Conservation. Biodiversity of the World: Conservation from Genes to Landscapes, 175–193.
Pietersen, D., McKechnie, A. E., & Jansen, R. (2014). A Review of the Anthropogenic Threats Faced by Temminck’s Ground Pangolin, Smutsia temminckii, in Southern Africa. South African Journal of Wildlife Research, 44(2), 167–178.
Sabashau, K., Utete, B., Madlamoto, D., Ngwenya, N., & Madamombe, H. (2024). Ecology, Status, and Distribution of Temminck’s Pangolin (Smutsia temminckii) in Hwange National Park. Wildlife Letters, 2(17–22).
Temminck’s Pangolin Smutsia temminckii
How can I help the #Boycott4Wildlife?
Take Action in Five Ways
1. Join the #Boycott4Wildlife on social media and subscribe to stay in the loop: Share posts from this website to your own network on Twitter, Mastadon, Instagram, Facebook and Youtube using the hashtags #Boycottpalmoil #Boycott4Wildlife.
Enter your email address
Sign Up
Join 1,396 other subscribers2. Contribute stories: Academics, conservationists, scientists, indigenous rights advocates and animal rights advocates working to expose the corruption of the palm oil industry or to save animals can contribute stories to the website.
Mel Lumby: Dedicated Devotee to Borneo’s Living Beings
Anthropologist and Author Dr Sophie Chao
Health Physician Dr Evan Allen
The World’s Most Loved Cup: A Social, Ethical & Environmental History of Coffee by Aviary Doert
How do we stop the world’s ecosystems from going into a death spiral? A #SteadyState Economy
3. Supermarket sleuthing: Next time you’re in the supermarket, take photos of products containing palm oil. Share these to social media along with the hashtags to call out the greenwashing and ecocide of the brands who use palm oil. You can also take photos of palm oil free products and congratulate brands when they go palm oil free.
https://twitter.com/CuriousApe4/status/1526136783557529600?s=20
https://twitter.com/PhillDixon1/status/1749010345555788144?s=20
https://twitter.com/mugabe139/status/1678027567977078784?s=20
4. Take to the streets: Get in touch with Palm Oil Detectives to find out more.
5. Donate: Make a one-off or monthly donation to Palm Oil Detectives as a way of saying thank you and to help pay for ongoing running costs of the website and social media campaigns. Donate here
Pledge your support#Africa #Angola #Botswana #Boycott4wildlife #BoycottPalmOil #Congo #Ethiopia #Kenya #Mammal #palmoil #pangolin #Pangolins #poaching #pokemon #pokemons #Rwanda #SouthAfrica #TemminckSPangolinSmutsiaTemminckii #tobacco #Uganda #vulnerable #VulnerableSpecies #wildlife
-
Temminck’s Pangolin Smutsia temminckii
Temminck’s Pangolin Smutsia temminckii
Vulnerable
Extant (resident): Angola; Botswana; Burundi; Central African Republic; Chad; Ethiopia; Kenya; Malawi; Mozambique; Namibia; Rwanda; South Africa; South Sudan; Sudan; Tanzania, United Republic of; Uganda; Zambia; Zimbabwe
Possibly Extant (resident): Congo
Possibly Extinct: Eswatini
The Temminck’s pangolin Smutsia temminckii is remarkable mammal. They are the second largest of the pangolin species and are reported to weigh between 12.5kg and 21 kilograms. They’re famous for their armour-like keratinous scales and their unique ability to curl into a protective ball when threatened. These elusive creatures are found in the savannahs and woodlands of sub-Saharan Africa and are essential to their ecosystem, controlling insect populations. The word pangolin comes from the Malay word “pengguling” meaning something that rolls up. Owing to their secretive nature and low densities, little is known about the pangolin. The species is killed primarily for Chinese medicine, even though their keratin scales have no medicinal value. All pangolins face a grave threat from trafficking for their meat and scales. Tragically, they are one of the most illegally traded mammals in the world.
Despite their ecological and cultural importance, Temminck’s pangolins are increasingly threatened by habitat destruction and illegal wildlife trade. Habitat loss from palm oil, cocoa and coffee agricultural expansion and mining further compounds their decline. Protect these unique creatures by boycotting palm oil and supporting strong anti-trafficking initiatives. #BoycottPalmOil #Boycott4Wildlife
The Temminck’s #pangolin is #vulnerable in Tanzania 🇹🇿 #Congo 🇨🇩 #Uganda 🇺🇬 from #poaching for their scales and meat along with #palmoil 🌴🤮 #tobacco 🚬🚭#deforestation. Help them survive when you #BoycottPalmOil 🌴🔥⛔️#Boycott4Wildlife @palmoildetect https://palmoildetectives.com/2021/08/21/temmincks-pangolin-smutsia-temminckii/
Share to BlueSky Share to TwitterRemarkable, secretive and gentle Temminck #Pangolins are living Poké Balls, who curl into a ball when threatened. They’re #vulnerable from the illegal #wildlife trade #palmoil and more. Help them #BoycottPalmOil 🌴🙊🔥☠️⛔️ #Boycott4Wildlife @palmoildetect https://palmoildetectives.com/2021/08/21/temmincks-pangolin-smutsia-temminckii/
Share to BlueSky Share to TwitterSpecies of pangolin are the most trafficked species in the world. Although deforestation is another major threat. The range of the Temminck’s Pangolins are increasingly threatened by shifting agriculture, small-holder farming and agro-industry farming. These farming practices are directly impacting pangolins through habitat loss and alteration, while the increased human presence in these previously undisturbed areas is resulting in increased levels of poaching.
IUCN Red List
Appearance and Behaviour
Temminck’s pangolins are medium-sized mammals with an average weight of 7–12 kg and a total length of approximately 90 cm, including their tail. Their overlapping, golden-brown scales, made of keratin (the same material as human fingernails), are a defining feature. These scales provide formidable protection against predators, allowing pangolins to roll into an impenetrable ball when threatened.
They are primarily nocturnal, foraging at night for ants and termites using their acute sense of smell. Their long, sticky tongues can extend deep into termite mounds, while their sharp claws are used to tear open nests. They exhibit a distinctive bipedal gait, walking on their hind legs while keeping their forelimbs off the ground.
A 2014 study revealed that Temminck’s pangolins exhibit home ranges that vary significantly based on habitat type, with individuals travelling several kilometres in search of food. This makes habitat loss and fragmentation particularly detrimental to their survival.
Threats
IUCN Status: Vulnerable
Illegal Wildlife Trade:
Temminck’s pangolins are heavily trafficked for their scales and meat, particularly for use in traditional Chinese medicine. Research indicates that their scales are wrongly believed to have healing properties, fuelling a devastating global black market.
Palm oil, tobacco and mining deforestation:
Agricultural expansion for palm oil, meat, tobacco and other commodities as well as mining destroys the habitats pangolins rely on. The savannahs and woodlands they inhabit are increasingly converted for human use.
Bycatch and Accidental Capture:
The 2014 study on anthropogenic threats found that Temminck’s pangolins are frequently killed accidentally in snares set for other wildlife. This unintended bycatch adds to their declining populations.
Climate Change:
Altered rainfall patterns and rising temperatures due to climate change, disrupt termite and ant populations, leading to reduced food availability for pangolins.
Low Reproductive Rates:
With only one offspring per year, Temminck’s pangolins are particularly vulnerable to population declines, as they cannot replenish their population quickly.
Geographic Range
Temminck’s pangolins inhabit sub-Saharan Africa, with populations found in South Africa, Namibia, Angola, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and Zambia. They thrive in savannahs and woodlands, favouring areas with abundant ant and termite populations.
Studies indicate their preference for regions with sandy soils, which make burrowing easier, and their dependence on undisturbed habitats highlights the critical need for protected areas. However, human activities increasingly encroach on these regions, limiting their available range.
Diet
Temminck’s pangolins are specialised insectivores, feeding almost exclusively on ants and termites. They consume millions of insects annually, making them essential for regulating insect populations and maintaining ecological balance.
Their foraging behaviour is influenced by the availability of prey, with pangolins often targeting specific ant and termite species. The destruction of termite mounds through land clearing and agriculture severely impacts their food sources, leading to nutritional stress.
Reproduction and Mating
Reproductive rates in Temminck’s pangolins are low, with females typically giving birth to a single offspring per year. After a gestation period of approximately 140 days, mothers care for their young by carrying them on their tails or backs. They often use the burrows of other animals including aardvarks and aardwolves.
The young pangolins’ soft scales harden within a few days of birth, providing protection. Maternal care is critical during the early months, as juveniles depend on their mothers for food and safety. Males do not participate in rearing the young, and populations are highly sensitive to poaching due to their slow reproductive cycles.
Human Perceptions of Temminck’s Pangolins
Temminck’s pangolins hold mixed perceptions among humans. A 2014 review of anthropogenic threats highlighted cultural beliefs in southern Africa where pangolins are revered as symbols of luck and rain. In contrast, others view them as commodities, hunted for their scales and meat.
The study also revealed that many rural communities are unaware of pangolins’ ecological importance in controlling insect populations. Conservation efforts are increasingly focused on educating these communities about the role pangolins play in maintaining ecosystem balance, with the goal of fostering coexistence and reducing poaching and exploitation.
Take Action!
Help protect Temminck’s pangolins by supporting organisations working to combat illegal wildlife trade and habitat destruction. Boycott palm oil and raise awareness of their plight. Use your voice to fight for their survival and ensure future generations can marvel at these extraordinary creatures. #BoycottPalmOil #Boycott4Wildlife
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Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA)
Further Information
Pangolin Specialist Group. (n.d.). Temminck’s Pangolin. IUCN Pangolin Specialist Group.
Pietersen, D., Jansen, R. & Connelly, E. 2019. Smutsia temminckii. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2019: e.T12765A123585768. https://dx.doi.org/10.2305/IUCN.UK.2019-3.RLTS.T12765A123585768.en. Downloaded on 06 June 2021.
Pietersen, D., Jansen, R., Swart, J., Panaino, W., Kotze, A., Rankin, P., & Nebe, B. (2020). Temminck’s Pangolin (Smutsia temminckii). In Pangolins: Science, Society and Conservation. Biodiversity of the World: Conservation from Genes to Landscapes, 175–193.
Pietersen, D., McKechnie, A. E., & Jansen, R. (2014). A Review of the Anthropogenic Threats Faced by Temminck’s Ground Pangolin, Smutsia temminckii, in Southern Africa. South African Journal of Wildlife Research, 44(2), 167–178.
Sabashau, K., Utete, B., Madlamoto, D., Ngwenya, N., & Madamombe, H. (2024). Ecology, Status, and Distribution of Temminck’s Pangolin (Smutsia temminckii) in Hwange National Park. Wildlife Letters, 2(17–22).
Temminck’s Pangolin Smutsia temminckii
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