February 15th is World Pangolin Day
Among the world’s lesser-known mammals, few are as peculiar or as imperiled as the pangolin. Scaly yet soft-footed, reclusive yet trafficked in vast numbers, pangolins embody paradoxes. On World Pangolin Day, here are a few facts about these creatures that warrant more attention than they receive.
💪 The only truly scaly mammal
Pangolins are the only mammals covered in keratin scales, the same material found in human fingernails. These protective plates, sharp-edged and overlapping, provide formidable armor: when threatened, a pangolin curls into a near-impenetrable ball.
🦕 A lineage older than humans
Pangolins belong to an ancient order of placental mammals that diverged from their closest relatives tens of millions of years ago. Though sometimes mistaken for anteaters or armadillos, they are more distantly related, with evolutionary roots tracing back to the time of the dinosaurs.
🐜 An appetite for ants—without teeth
Despite being specialized insectivores, pangolins have no teeth. Instead, their extraordinarily long, sticky tongues—sometimes exceeding the length of their bodies—allow them to extract ants and termites from deep within nests. A single pangolin may consume millions of insects annually, playing a vital role in pest control and soil aeration.
🛑 Victims of the illegal wildlife trade
By some estimates, pangolins are the most trafficked wild mammals on Earth. Demand for their scales—falsely believed to have medicinal properties—has driven all eight species toward the brink. In some regions, their meat is considered a delicacy, compounding the threat.
💔 Masters of defense, but defenseless against humans
A pangolin’s instinct to curl into a ball is highly effective against natural predators but futile against poachers, who can simply pick them up. Unlike elephants or rhinos, which are poached using guns, pangolins are often captured alive, though they often die in transit.
⌛ Conservation efforts remain tenuous
International trade in pangolins has been banned under CITES since 2016, yet poaching continues. Some countries have ramped up enforcement, while rehabilitation centers attempt to reintroduce trafficked pangolins into the wild on a very small scale. However, their secretive nature makes conservation efforts difficult.
For a species so ancient, so specialized, and so ecologically important, pangolins remain remarkably obscure. If they are to persist, obscurity can no longer be their fate.
On that front, Mongabay intends to significantly scale up our coverage of pangolins going forward. Here is Mongabay’s pangolin feed.
