PANGOLINS

The pangolin is one of the world's strangest-looking wild animals. Pangolins are
insect-eating mammals covered in tough, overlapping scales. Pangolins are uniquely covered
in tough, overlapping scales. These mammals eat ants and termites using an extraordinarily long,
sticky tongue, and are able to quickly roll themselves up into a tight ball when they feel
threatened. Eight different pangolin species can be found across Asia and Africa. Poaching for
illegal wildlife trade and habitat loss have made these incredible creatures one of the most
threatened groups of mammals in the world. There are eight species of pangolins. All
pangolins belong to the genus Manis in the family Manidae, which is the only family within
the order Pholidota. Although pangolins share similar characteristics with Xenarthrans
(anteaters, armadillos, and sloths), they are in fact more closely related to the order
Carnivora (cats, dogs, bears, etc.).

Pangolin species vary in size from about 1.6kg (~3.5 lbs) to a maximum of about
33kg (~73 lbs). They vary in color from light to yellowish brown through olive to dark
brown. Pangolins have short legs, a long snout and a thick prehensile tail. The head is small
and cone-shaped. The ears are small. Even average size pangolins have a very long tongue
that can extend 40 centimeters beyond its mouth, allowing them to reach deep into ant and
termite nests. The animal has no teeth and its lower jaw is just slivers of bone. Its powerful
stomach muscles “chew” its food. Pangolins are covered in armor made up of horny plates,
which overlap like shingles in a roof. The armor serves as camouflage as well as proving
protection. The pangolin’s underside is naked except for a few sparse hairs. On Chinese
pangolins and other species the snout, cheeks, throat and inner limbs are also not covered
by scales. When it is rolled into a ball none of the soft areas are exposed. On each of forelegs
are three long claws (extensions of three of five toes). They are used mainlt to dig out holes
in ant and termite nests. The claws on the hind legs are shorter. The pangolin’s claws and
prehensile tail make it both a powerful burrower and agile tree climber. Pangolins are
around insects a lot and don’t seem to mind having them crawl all over their bodies. They
have special muscles in their nose and eyes to close off these sensitive areas. Sometimes
they will open up their scales and let ants climb on their skin, apparently to let them
consume irritating skin parasites.

Pangolins are found in a variety habitats, including tropical and flooded forests,
thick brush, cleared and cultivated areas, and savannah grassland. Pangolins dig deep
burrows for sleeping and nesting that contain circular chambers. Large chambers have
been discovered in terrestrial pangolin burrows that are big enough for a human to crawl
inside and stand up. Some pangolin species, such as the Sunda Pangolin, also sleep in the
hollows and forks of trees and logs. Pangolins live predominantly on a diet of ants and
termites, which they may supplement with various other invertebrates including bee larvae, flies,
worms, earthworms, and crickets. This specialist diet makes them extremely difficult to maintain
in captivity—they often reject unfamiliar insect species or become ill when fed foreign food.
Wild pangolins locate insect nests using a well developed sense of smell. Voraciously digging
ants and termites from mounds, stumps, and fallen logs with their claws, they use their extremely
long sticky tongues to capture and eat them. Pangolins’ insatiable appetite for insects gives them
an important role in their ecosystem: pest control. Estimates indicate that one adult pangolin can
consume more than 70 million insects annually

Pangolins are solitary, nocturnal animals. They sleep during the day in burrows
(sometimes as many as 70 different ones scattered over a large territory). They can walk
on their hind legs but most move along on all fours. When a pangolin is threatened or
attacked it rolls up into a ball — with its head sandwiched against its stomach and its
muscular tail wrapped around its body — and emits an unpleasant smell like a skunk. Not
even a lion or tiger can not pry one open. Pangolins also escape predators by climbing
trees, digging into burrows and even forming a ball and rolling down hills — one of the few
examples of wheel-like locomotion in the animal kingdom. Pangolins can swim. Some say
pangolins like to take a swim after a meal of ants to clean off parasites on their bodies.
Female pangolins usually give birth to one offspring after a 120 day gestation period. A
Pangolin tongue is so long that one end of it is attached to animal’s pelvis. Ants and termites are
collected with sticky mucus on the tongue and swallowed. Pangolins "chew" using the abrasive
walls in their stomach and pebbles they have swallowed. Pangolins, numbats from Australia,
aardvarks from Africa and ant eaters of Latin America all have long sticky tongue used for
collecting ants. These species, all from different animal groups, developed their tongues
independently. Describing the mechanic of a feeding pangolin, David Attenborough wrote: “A
pangolin in search of a meal opens a termite nest with a slash of the claws on its front legs, and
pokes its curved snout inside. Angry termites will swarm out to defend their colony but the
pangolin is little affected. It presses its horny scales firmly against one another, it keeps the lids
of its eyes, which are particularly thick, tightly shut and it closes its nostrils with special muscles.
It then protrudes a long black tongue which is liberally anointed with a sticky spittle that pours
from an enormous salivary gland housed in its chest. This tongue snakes into the wrecked
galleries of the ant’s nest, collects the insects and, flicking in and out, carries them back to its
snout. There they are immediately swallowed and mashed up by the horny lining of the muscular
stomach. The giant African pangolin can consume as many as 200,000 insects in a single night.

Male and female pangolins differ in weight; in most species, males are 10-50 percent
heavier than females. Pangolins reach sexual maturity at two years, and most pangolins
give birth to a single offspring, though two and three young have been reported in the
Asian species. When born, pangolins are about six inches long and weigh about 12 ounces
(0.75 lbs). Their scales are soft and pale, and begin to harden by the second day. Pangolin
mothers nurture their young in nesting burrows. A mother will protectively roll around her
baby when sleeping or if threatened. Babies nurse for three to four months, but can eat
termites and ants at one month. Infant pangolins will ride on the base of the mother’s tail as
she forages for insects. It is unknown how long pangolins can live in the wild, though
pangolins have reportedly lived as long as twenty years in captivity.
 Jeremy Hance of mongabay.com wrote: “If you want to picture a pangolin think of a
small anteater and then cover it in scaly armor, such as you might imagine on a dragon.
Along with these telltale scales, the pangolin has a long snout, with a supple tongue for
efficiently gobbling thousands of ants and termites; it sports long claws to dig up termite
mounds and walks on its knuckles to keep these claws in prime shape; in addition
pangolins have skunk-like anal scent glands to repel predators. Strong as a five-limbed
circus acrobat (counting their prehensile tail), pangolins are incredible tree-climbers and,
even more surprisingly, excellent swimmers. But perhaps, the pangolins most famous
behavior is its ability to roll up into a scaly ball, an excellent defense against non-human
predators. In fact, the word pangolin comes from the Malay word 'penggulung,' which
means 'roller.' These seemingly hodge-podge traits have made pangolins successful enough
to conquer two continents with the eight species split evenly between Asia and Africa.
[Source: Jeremy Hance, mongabay.com, February 11, 2013 -]

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pangolin