Metamorphosis: The Pangolin

 In the days of our ancestors, headhunting was prevalent. A village would attack another village, and a hero’s worth was measured by the number of heads he could harvest from a battlefield.

It so happened that thousands of moons ago, a village was attacked by another village, and there was only a sole survivor. The lone survivor escaped from his ravaged village and went into hiding. With enemies pursuing him and his determination to survive, he decided to disguise himself. He collected the yellow mushrooms from pine trees and embedded them onto his skin. He was covered from head to foot in yellow mushrooms. Since he was outnumbered, he could only do what was necessary for his survival. With mushrooms covering his body, he hid in forests until one day, he woke up to find that he was no longer human. For he was turned into a pangolin. 

Since he had become a pangolin his enemies would no longer recognise him. Thus, the lone survivor of the destroyed village became a pangolin and continued to live the life of a pangolin.

The village of Changa in the Kamjong District of Manipur inhabited by the Tangkhul Naga tribe believes in this folktale and till now they do not kill pangolins in their area for they believe that pangolins were once humans and thus killing pangolins was akin to killing ones own kind. This belief helps in the conservation of pangolins in the village of Changa.