The Trade of Porcupines in Malaysia With International Trade Links
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background and Research Aims Porcupines are frequently traded in Asia but evidence of this remains undocumented. This study was undertaken to address the dearth of information on porcupine trade dynamics using Malaysia as a case study. Methods To accomplish this, traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) outlets throughout the country were surveyed, the existence of porcupine farms were determined and porcupine seizures in Malaysia from 2011 – 2019 were analysed. Results The data revealed that porcupines are coveted predominantly for bezoars used in TCM and for breeding stock. Porcupine bezoars were found in 90% of TCM outlets surveyed though it is likely that the market consists of genuine and fake products. Porcupine farming appears to be gaining popularity and predominantly caters to a demand for breeding pairs. There were 47 seizures amounting to 110 porcupines of at least three species. Seizures included mostly live animals but also meat and quills. Conclusion The harvesting and consumption of porcupines is legally permitted in Malaysia. However, it is evident that illegal hunting of porcupines is also occurring. Captive breeding is unlikely to reduce poaching of porcupines considering the high value associated with wild-sourced bezoars. Local use is also driving international trade of bezoars particularly from Indonesia. Implications for Conservation Research on porcupine trade dynamics in Southeast Asia is limited. This is a conservation concern particularly as porcupines are valued as commercial commodities. As Asian porcupines face a multitude of synergistic threats ( i.e., habitat loss, human conflict and illegal hunting), understanding these cumulative impacts on wild populations is a conservation priority. More research on international trade dynamics is also warranted as it is currently occurring without any regulation or monitoring. Listing porcupines in the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) could potentially mitigate this.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".