“Khanyisa, a life-size pangolin, will soon visit homes and gardens,” rejoices the South African weekly Sunday Times. A member of the Temminck species, the only one of the four species of African pangolin present in South Africa, Khanyisa is the star of a new mobile application, called “Wild Voices: Pangolin”.
Launched on the occasion of World Pangolin Day, February 21, the augmented reality application allows the one-meter-long animal to be projected into the users’ environment. If you get too close to him, Khanyisa will curl up into a ball, defensive, as he would in the wild. Above all, the animal answers questions about its species and the threats weighing on it.
Because this shy nocturnal animal covered in scales which feeds mainly on ants and termites is the most poached mammal, mainly for its meat or its scales, used in traditional medicine in Asia and Africa. The eight existing species (four in Africa, four in Asia) are threatened with extinction.
More than two hundred pangolins saved
Convinced that “the future of wildlife protection must include bold new ways to reconnect people with nature,” officials from the Johannesburg Wildlife Veterinary Hospital, a veterinary clinic dedicated to wild animals, teamed up with the Habitat Nature Parks Foundation and the South African production company Habitat XR to develop the application.
Thanks to her, the co-founder of the clinic, Karin Lourens, hopes “transform an unknown and abstract animal into a real creature worthy of protection”, she confides to Sunday Times. On the front line, the Johannesburg Wildlife Hospital is witnessing the “devastating consequences of wildlife trafficking on pangolins on a daily basis”, adds the veterinarian. More than 200 pangolins rescued from trafficking have been treated by the clinic, which also works with the justice system and law enforcement.
With Khanyisa, whose name means “he who brings light” in Zulu, the veterinary team hopes to expand prevention “beyond the hospital walls”.
