70 Science and technology The EconomistFebruary 3rd 2018
2 meaning that these lights can be seen re-
gardless of what the person in question is
looking at. Such lights, most probably
small panels ofLEDs, could be fitted into a
headset, a hat or onto the frame of a pair of
glasses. They would be controlled by va-
rious motion sensors and blink on and off
in a way that is designed to mimic the ve-
locity, rolling, pitching and other move-
ments of a vehicle.
For the wearer of such kit, the effect
would be to provide a visual response that
corresponds to the movements the inner
ear is detecting. So, for instance, a panel of
LEDs positioned at the side of each eye
might flash from the front to the back when
a vehicle is moving forward but stop when
it is braking. Similarly, the lights could blink
in sequence towards the left if the car was
turning left. The speed of the flashing and
the brightness of the lights could be tuned
to match the intensity of the movement,
such as the vehicle’s rate of acceleration. Dr
Sivak and Mr Schoettle think the light ar-rays could also be fitted to various parts of
vehicles’ interiors, such as their door pil-
lars, sidewalls and seats. That way a pas-
senger would be aware of them without
having to don special equipment.
The Michigan team are making a proto-
type and the university, which hopes to
commercialise the idea, is in discussions
with carmakers and automotive suppliers.
The system could, of course, also be used
by passengers who feel sick in cars with a
driver at the wheel—a fate to which chil-
dren seem particularly susceptible, for rea-
sons that remain obscure. It might also
help with other forms of motion sickness,
such as airsickness or seasickness, al-
though the ways aircraft and boats move
are different from the movement of cars.
For many, helping people feel well in cars
would be enough. And for taxi companies
like Uber and Lyft, which are planning to
offer autonomous vehicles that can be
summoned by an app, the flashing lights
could save a fortune in cleaning bills. 7P
ANGOLINS are a smuggler’s dream. For
defence, and when asleep, they roll
themselves up into spheres, scales on the
outside, to thwart any predator. That
makes them easy to handle and pack. And
handled and packed they have been, in
enormous numbers. The International
Union for Conservation of Nature, a
worldwide wildlife-preservation organi-
sation, reckons that more than 1m pango-
lins were traded illegally from their African
and Asian homelands over the decade to- That may be a conservative estimate.
A paper published last year in Conserva-
tion Letterscalculates the number of pan-
golins hunted in central Africa alone as be-
tween 400,000 and 2.7m a year. Based on
statistics such as these it seems likely that
pangolins, of which there are eight species,
four African and fourAsian, are the most
trafficked type of animal in the world.
Some are consumed locally. That is not
necessarily illegal, for laws vary from place
to place. International trade, though, is a
different matter. Early in 2017 CITES, the
Convention on International Trade in En-
dangered Species, listed all eight pangolins
as part of what is known as Appendix 1.
This means signatories to the convention
(which most countries are) cannot permit
them to be imported or exported.
Most of those thatare, nevertheless, ex-
ported illegally from their homelands end
up in China and Vietnam. In these coun-
tries pangolins’ meat is a treat and their
scales are used in folk medicine, even
though those scales are made of keratin,
the same substance as hair and fingernails,
and thus have no medicinal value. Pango-
lin scales fetch as much as $750 a kilogram
in China. A 12-tonne stash of them, the
world’s biggest seizure, was found last
summer by the authorities in Shenzhen.
That alone represents 20,000-30,000 ani-
mals. And the African end of the operation
is equally big business. In 2015 two tonnesof scales were found in a raid conducted at
Entebbe airport in Uganda. Between 2010
and 2015 there were 1,270 seizures of pan-
golins or parts of pangolins around the
world, in 67 countries and territories.
Cracking down on poachers and trad-
ers is difficult, particularly in poor places.
Even when governments are willing, con-
servation agencies often lack the resources,
such as vehicles (and, indeed, the fuel to
put in them) needed to patrol forests and
investigate trafficking networks. And will-
ingness is not always there. Such anti-
poaching and antitrafficking laws as do ex-
ist frequently go unenforced.
Part of the blame lies with ignorance.
Awareness of pangolins is patchy. They are
nocturnal and shy, and thus rarely feature
on tourists’ tick-lists. That makes them a
low priority, even to game-management
authorities who know they are there. Of-
ten, though, those authorities do not.
Uganda, for example, is home to all four Af-
rican species of pangolin. But until last
year, when a pangolin-awareness initia-
tive, run by the Tikki Hywood Foundation,
a Zimbabwean charity, began explaining
the animals to local wildlife rangers, many
of those rangers did not know what a pan-
golin was or what to do if they found one
in someone’s possession.
The Hywood Foundation’s initiative is
part of a larger effort in Uganda, sponsored
by the Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA),
the government’s conservation agency.
Now that pangolins are on the UWA’s ra-
dar, it has stepped up intelligence and in-
vestigative work on poachers and traffick-
ers of the animal. Sniffer dogs, trained with
support from the African Wildlife Founda-
tion, a Kenyan charity, have also been de-
ployed at Entebbe. Dogs can detect pango-
lins, as well as ivory, rhino horn and other
contraband wildlife products.
At the consumption end of the traffick-
ing routes, too, things are starting to hap-
pen. In China, for example, Jackie Chan, a
film star who was instrumental in bringing
about that country’s recent ban on the sale
of elephant ivory, has thrown his weight
behind the pangolin. A video he made last
year, which depicts him training animated
pangolins to fight poachers, has been
viewed more than 12m times.
In theory, eating pangolin meat (along
with that of many other wild species) is al-
ready illegal in China—not for conserva-
tion reasons, but as a reaction to the out-
break ofSARS, a fatal respiratory disease,
that happened there in 2002. In practice,
the law is ignored. But if the authorities
chose to enforce it then the market for pan-
golin flesh would shrink a lot.
Persuading people to stop usingthe ani-
mals’ scales may be harder. The ivory ban
does suggest Chinese attitudes towards
wildlife are changing. But how long such
changes will take to trickle down to the un-
fortunate pangolin remains to be seen. 7Conserving pangolinsA problem of scale
Kampala
Some of nature’s strangest mammals are also some of the most threatenedNo hiding place