Old world porcupines (Rodentia Hystricidae) face a number of threats including an increasing demand for their different body parts, such as meat quills and hairs. However, a recent article published in the journal Global Ecology and Conservation has identified a new threat to old-world porcupines - a demand for bezoars.

Bezoars are masses of undigested organic and inorganic material, often formed in a porcupine’s digestive tract, and congealed into a hard ball.

For centuries, people have valued these “stones” or “dates”, as they are sometimes called, for their purported and unsubstantiated medicinal abilities - from fevers to diabetes and even cancer. Yet, irrespective of the lack of evidence for curative properties, the trade in bezoars has persisted. Between the 16th to 19th centuries, porcupine bezoars were valued so much that they priced each one “as high as forty times its own weight in gold.” These days, bezoars sell for an average of US$151.8 (HKD$1,176).

The study tracked, for the first time, the online trade in old-world porcupines. The researches examined e-commerce sites in Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore for four months in 2019, where they found active for-sale listings for 433 individual bezoars and a large variety of powdered products. Based on the weight of the powders, and the assumption that they might have contained other ingredients, the researches estimated this translated to at least 680 and as many as 1,300 bezoars.

Previous research has suggested that bezoars only grow in an incidentally small portion of the porcupine population, so the total number of animals killed to accumulate that quantity for sale could conceivably have been in the tens of thousands.

The paper called for more study about this issue and additional conservation actions to protect these animals. Most old world porcupine species are listed on the IUCN Red List as either “least concern” or “data deficient”. Only the Philippine porcupine is listed as “vulnerable to extinction”. Not porcupine species are protected by the Convention on Trade in Endangered Species (“CITES”).

Although there were limitations caused by the study’s short time frame and inability to examine and verify the nature of bezoars, the authors warn that the “current trade levels are likely unsustainable, and we predict that porcupine species may become threatened in the future should current trade levels continue.”

While some porcupines are farmed, the study indicates pressure on wild porcupines, which also face additional threats such as habitat destruction, the bushmeat trade as well as persecution as agricultural pests. The authors also urged source and consumer countries to (i) review the species’ conservation status in range countries; (ii) regulate domestic trade through legislative changes in countries where trade is most prominent; and (iii) ensure existing laws are enforced.