Pangolins: Senses

Summary: Sight, sound, taste, and smell. These senses help pangolins hunt, communicate, and survive. Join Kiersten as she talks about what we know about pangolin senses.

 

For my hearing impaired listeners, a transcript of this podcast follows the show notes.

 

Show Notes: 

“Pangolin genomes and the evolution of mammalian scales and immunity.” View Woh Choo, Mike Rayko, Tze King Tan, Ranjeev Hair, Aleksey Komissarov, Wei See Wee, Andrey A. Yurchenko, Sergey Oliver, Gail Tamazian, Agostinho Antunes, Richard K. Wilson. Welsey C. Warren, Klaus-Peter Koepfli, Patrick Minx, Ksenia Krasheninnikova, Antionette Kotze, Desire L. Dalton, Elaine Vermaak, Ian C. Paterson, Pavel Dodrynin, Frankie Thomas Sitam, Jeffrine J. Rosie-Ryan, Warren E. Johnson, Aini Mohamed Yusoff, Shu-Jin Luo, Kanal Vizi Karuppannan, Gang Fang, Deyou Zheng, Mark B. Gerstein, Leonard Lipovich, Stephen J. O’Brien, and Goat Jah Wong. Genome Res. 2016 Oct; 26(10):1312-1322. Doi: 10.1101/gr.203521.115

www.savepangolins.org

The Encyclopedia of Mammals edited by Dr. David Macdonald

Pangolin Conservation Organizations: 

Rare and Endangered Species Trust - www.restnamibia.org

Save Vietnam’s Wildlife - www.svw.vn

 

Transcript

(Piano music plays)

Kiersten - This is Ten Things I Like About…a ten minute, ten episode podcast about unknown or misunderstood wildlife.

(Piano music stops)

 

Welcome to Ten Things I Like About… I’m Kiersten, your host and this is a podcast about misunderstood or unknown creatures in nature. Some we’ll find right out side our doors and some are continents away but all are fascinating. 

 

This podcast will focus ten, ten minute episodes on different animals and their amazing characteristics. Please join me on this extraordinary journey, you won’t regret it.

 

This episode continues pangolins and my seventh favorite thing about pangolins is their senses! Today we’ll talk about their vision, hearing, sense of smell, and taste.

 

For this podcast I found a fascinating study from some scientists that investigated the pangolin’s DNA. They looked at the genome of the Malayan pangolin and the Chinese pangolin. 

 

Here’s a little scientific background to help this all make sense. 

 

The genome, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, is the complete set of genes or genetic material present in a cell or organism. This research paper was published in 2016 and before that a whole-genome map of the pangolin had never been done. Why is this something that we would want to research at all, you may ask? I applaud you for that thought because it’s a great question. The answer is that studying genomes of various mammals helps us understand mammalian evolution which helps us understand current mammalian behavior which in turn helps us understand how to ensure their futures. We still have so many questions about pangolins, such as why they are the only animal alive today covered in keratinous scales. This research can hopefully help us answer those questions.

 

Without getting too in-depth with this process let’s just say the researchers sequenced these two pangolins’ genomes and learned some interesting things that relate to the topic of this podcast. 

 

Let’s start with vision. Most pangolins are mainly nocturnal, meaning they are active at night. There are some exceptions to this rule, just like any rule of nature, such as the daytime activities of Cape pangolins when the weather is cool and that the long tailed pangolin is often active during the day. Outside of these exceptions, pangolins are typically active during darker times. Many nocturnal animals that are not large predators, such as lions or owls, often have poor eyesight. The pangolin is thought to be one of these animals. At the time of publishing this podcast no one has done any visual tests with pangolins. We do know that their eyes are small compared to the rest of their body, so sight is most likely not their best attribute and interestingly the scientists studying the genomes found an absence of two genes important to good vision.

 

One deals with visual clarity. Visual clarity is exactly what it sounds like, clear vision. In humans we call it 20/20 vision. Simply, it means you can see objects clearly. The other gene controls phototransduction, Phototransduction  has to do with the detection of light. This gene helps nerves register the entrance of light into the eye and triggers a reaction in the brain. That’s about as far as I got in my understanding of phototransduction. Sorry! The absence of these two genes tells us that the hypothesis that pangolins have poor eyesight is most likely correct.

 

Okay, let’s move on to their sense of smell. Almost every source I’ve referenced about pangolin senses says they have a strong sense of smell. Once again no scientific testing has been done to determine this in a controlled setting, but considering they eat things that can’t easily be seen and we have just established that pangolins do not rely on their eyesight for much, it becomes obvious that they most likely have an excellent sense of smell. 

 

The scientists that mapped the genome of the Chinese and Malayan pangolin also discovered evidence to support this. As they were evaluating their results, the scientists compared the genomes of other animals such as cats, dogs, horses, and even humans to the pangolins and found that the pangolins had many more genes in the olfactory receptor family (whispers: that’s their nose!) indicating that pangolins have a heightened sense of smell.

 

There is another reason, besides hunting ants, for the pangolins to have an excellent sense of smell and that’s communication. In pervious episodes, I’ve mentioned that pangolins are generally solitary animals, but they do need to communicate with other pangolins. The way they do that is through scent marking. Pangolins have well developed scent glands in the anal region (whispers: that’s their bums) that they use to spray or rub scent on trees and rocks to communicate territory boundaries. Females will also scent mark structures whenthey are ready to mate with males. It’s a great way to communicate when you don’t know when someone will come by to get your message because the scent can last for days, weeks, maybe even months. 

 

Moving on to our next sense, hearing. We don’t know too much about hearing in pangolins. That’s probably not much of a surprise to you by now, especially if you’ve listened to my other podcasts. There is so much we don’t yet know about pangolins. But we believe that they have excellent hearing. They use this sense to help them navigate at night and listen for predators, as well as listen for the tell-tale sounds of ants and termites. With both a heightened sense of smell and excellent hearing it makes them superheroes at finding underground ants and termites. Who needs vision when you can sniff out your prey?!

 

One really cool thing we know about pangolins hearing is that they can close their ears. I wish I could do that without using my hands! They do this when they’ve dug into an ant mound so they can keep ants from crawling into their ears while they’re enjoying a good meal! Brilliant!

 

Our final sense is taste. Pangolins must have some sense of taste because it has been reported that they tend to favor specific species of ants when they are forging for food. Now, ants produce formic acid inside their bodies. They use it to protect themselves and their nest. That’s why an ant bite hurts and itches so bad. But when eaten by other animals, the formic acid has a specific taste. 

 

Apparently in some parts of the world people eat ants. I’m not judging, but I don’t know if that’s going to be on MY menu any time soon. Anyways, it has been reported that different species of ants taste differently. Some may taste spicy, while others taste sour, and some even taste citrusy! I’m not sure which ones the pangolins prefer but it seems that they do have a preference. 

 

There is so much more we have to learn about pangolin senses, but I hope you discovered something fascinating about pangolin senses from this podcast because it is my seventh favorite thing about pangolins.

 

 Please visit savepangolins.org to find out even more about pangolins and discover what you can do to save this unique animal. To help the African Cape Pangolin visit the Rare and Endangered Species Trust at restnamibia.org and to learn more about Asian pangolins and help the Sunda and Chinese pangolin visit Save Vietnam’s Wildlife at svw.vn. 

 

Join me next week for another ten minute podcast focusing on another thing I like about pangolins. 

 

(Piano Music plays) 

This has been an episode of Ten Things I like About with Kiersten and Company. Original music written and performed by Katherine Camp, piano extraordinaire.