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Africa - Instead of a birthday cake, a hunting community surprised researcher Lauren Coad with pangolin stew.

“They were like, ‘bon anniversaire!’ and there’s a pangolin in a pot. Pangolin stew with a little candle on the top. It’s probably the weirdest birthday present I’ve ever received.”

Of course, she had to eat it – or seem terribly rude.

A decade ago, during her PhD fieldwork on wildlife hunting in Central Africa, Coad lived for two years in a remote forest village in Gabon.

There was no electricity, no running water, no cellphone reception, no refrigeration – and few livestock, which were kept as a form of savings account, that could be used on a rainy day, rather than a daily source of meat. People relied on bushmeat for almost all their protein.

“When you figure it out, they’re eating roughly the same amount of meat as we do in the West, it’s just that ours comes from farmed animals, and theirs comes from the forest. If you don’t go out into the forest and hunt you’re not going to eat anything.”