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Originally Posted by DAHenkel
Also, as an aside...another sea mammal here in Southeast Asia worth looking at is the dugong or sea cow. I was told by the carvers though that dugong ivory is too small to make proper "hulu gigi". Also, dugong are very rare, shy creatures which doesn't jibe with the huge supply needed to make all those gigi hilts. I've seen some badik hilts that were said to be dugong though.
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Yeah I still remember back in the 90s where a fisherman from Johore accidentally caught a dugong and the news went national. It got so many mass media coverage and many people came down to see it by themselves. There were also a struggle between the wildlife bodies and the founder on the right of keeping this very endangered mammal, before it sadly die...
Of course the poor dugong mentioned above was rather small, but perhaps the dugongs / sea cows of those days were fairly big as to provide enough sources for those massive pekaka hilts?
It happen to the tigers and lions too, whereas now you could hardly see them raised up as big a size as their predecessors...