Reclusive, gentle and quick to roll up into a ball, pangolins keep a low profile. But they are also the world’s most heavily trafficked mammal, and experts have been ringing alarm bells over their survival.
More than a million pangolins are believed to have been poached from the wild in the past decade. Most are used to supply demand in China, where pangolin scales are believed to cure conditions from headaches and menstrual cramps to nose bleeding and lack of virility.
There are four species of pangolin in Africa and another four in Asia. Watchdogs say those in Asia are being eaten to extinction, while populations in Africa are declining fast.
Photo courtesy of Taipei Zoo
照片：台北市動物園提供
In Taiwan, the Formosan pangolin, a subspecies native to the island, has been greatly reduced due to loss of habitat and poaching, despite being listed as a protected species under the Wildlife Conservation Act since 1990. Experts warn that, if the situation does not improve, the Formosan pangolin may become extinct in ten years.
(AFP, additional reporting by Tu Yu-an)
穿山甲生性溫和，隱密低調，遇到危險即捲成球狀。然而，牠們卻是全球走私問題最嚴重的哺乳動物，為此，學者專家一再提出警告。
據了解，過去十年有超過一百萬隻野生穿山甲遭到盜獵，大部分流入中國，因其鱗片據說可以治療頭痛、經痛、流鼻血、甚至壯陽。
全球共有八種穿山甲，非洲及亞洲各有四種。保育團體指出，亞洲的穿山甲已經快被吃光，而非洲的穿山甲也急遽減少。
台灣穿山甲為本土特有亞種，雖自一九九○起列入野生動物保護法下的保育類動物，數量仍因盜獵及棲地減少而遽降。專家警告，若情況未見改善，台灣穿山甲可能會在十年內絕種。
(台北時報涂宇安編譯)
Chinese startup DeepSeek’s launch of its latest AI models, which it says are on a par or better than industry-leading models in the US at a fraction of the cost, is threatening to upset the technology world order. The company has attracted attention in global AI circles after writing in a paper last month that the training of DeepSeek-V3 required less than US$6 million worth of computing power from Nvidia H800 chips. DeepSeek’s AI Assistant, powered by DeepSeek-V3, has overtaken rival ChatGPT to become the top-rated free application available on Apple’s App Store in the US. This has raised doubts about the reasoning
Recently, the Iraq parliament’s preliminary approval of a controversial proposal to drastically lower the legal marriage age for girls from 18 to nine has sparked widespread concern. This move has drawn strong reactions both domestically and internationally, as many worry it will exacerbate child marriage issues and severely infringe upon women’s rights. At the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in 1994, Iraq explicitly prohibited the legalization of child marriage. Currently, the legal marriage age for both men and women is 18, although women can marry at 15 with a guardian’s consent. The newly proposed amendment to the Personal
A: Any plans for Valentine’s Day tomorrow? B: I’ll go to karaoke with a group of fans to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the late pop diva Whitney Houston’s debut. A: Sounds like fun. B: She released her eponymous album “Whitney Houston” on Feb. 14, 1985, launching a glorious career that spanned over four decades. A: Can I join you for karaoke? A: 明天情人節你要幹嘛？ B: 我要和一群歌迷去KTV，慶祝流行天后惠妮休斯頓出道40週年！ A: 哇好像很好玩。 B: 她在1985年2月14日發行同名專輯《惠妮休斯頓》，並開啟了輝煌的40年演藝生涯。 A: 我能跟你一起去KTV嗎？ （By Eddy Chang, Taipei Times／台北時報張聖恩）
The crimson hue of theater seats is a long-standing tradition that has persisted through centuries and across continents. This seemingly universal choice is influenced by a fascinating combination of historical, visual, and practical factors. Inspired by the lavish aesthetics of Italian opera houses, where red has been a dominant color, movie theaters often adopt the red color __1__—a tradition that emerged in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Associated with power, the color red was used in opera houses to __2__ an image of sophistication and grandeur. As opera spread across Europe, more and more opera houses adopted
RSS