Tiny stowaways — disease-carrying ticks — can be hidden beneath the armoured scales of pangolins, the world’s most illegally trafficked mammals.
Tiny stowaways — disease-carrying ticks — can be hidden beneath the armoured scales of pangolins, the world’s most illegally trafficked mammals.
These ectoparasitic hitchhikers can transmit infectious agents to humans, livestock and wildlife during the illegal trade and rehabilitation of pangolins, said Zwannda Nethavhani, a postdoctoral fellow at the department of environmental, water and earth sciences at Tshwane University of Technology.
On the sidelines of last week’s 14th Oppenheimer Research Conference, which brought together researchers, policymakers and conservation leaders to advance African-led solutions for biodiversity and climate challenges, she detailed how the transcontinental movement of pangolins and their scales poses spill-over risks to humans and animals.
“They are the world’s most trafficked mammals,” Nethavhani told the Mail & Guardian. “We’ve been tracking that and now we are worried about what they are carrying under their scales — is whatever they’re carrying a threat to the receiving country or where they originated from?”
She and her colleagues studied 17 live pangolins confiscated from trafficking networks for rehabilitation and nine bags of seized scales. “So far, what we’ve found are mites and ticks … The tick species are associated with the transmission of different diseases — diseases that are threats to both humans and animals.”
Using morphological and molecular techniques, the researchers collected 275 ticks, identifying five species: Amblyomma compressum, A. hebraeum, Ornithodoros moubata (previously misidentified as O. compactus probably because of misidentification at the nymphal stage), Rhipicephalus theileri and R. simus.
The research found that, notably, ticks from the three identified genera (a taxonomic group covering more than one species) are known vectors of pathogens causing diseases such as heartwater, anaplasmosis, babesiosis, theileriosis, African swine fever and human relapsing fever.
“These diseases attack red and white blood cells,” Nethavhani said, noting that a tick must be carrying a pathogen to transmit it. “The symptoms that you can start getting are maybe animals and animals getting weak, loss of appetite, skin shedding and the worst case scenario is coma, paralysis and death.”
Many of the people involved in harvesting pangolins from the wild are driven by poverty or unemployment, often unaware of the potential health risks the animals pose.
“People are looking at the price — what they get when they traffic these animals … Now we can speak as scientists and publish all these manuscripts but the truth is all this trafficking that is happening, it’s connected to a network of people,” she said.
“People at the base — the community members — are being sent by people at high places so now we’ve been looking into whether they know what they’re doing is wrong. Do they know that these specimens that they are carrying around or trafficking harbour life-threatening specimens?”
The results of the research show that pangolin trafficking must not just be framed as a conservation issue, but as a public health concern.
“If we can’t stop this trade purely for wildlife protection, maybe we can stop it for health. We want people to understand the risks — not just to the pangolins, but to communities and the environment,” Nethavhani said.
She advocates for strengthened health screening of confiscated pangolins before rehabilitation or release; the integration of ectoparasite monitoring into wildlife trade surveillance; enhanced awareness among wildlife officers and vets about zoonotic risks and further research into the pathogens carried by pangolin-associated ticks and mites.