What is a pangolin?
Imagine a pine cone six feet long. You would be even more astonished to see this great pile of scales start to amble over the ground or scuttle up the steep side of a cliff. It might even roll itself into a big ball, bristling all over with jagged knives. This living, over grown pine cone is the pangolin one of the anteaters whose special job is to help keep down the world’s ant and termite population.
This living pine cone of an animal is an anteater of the Old World. We find him in tropical, termite infested regions of Asia and Africa, in the West Indies and on certain warm islands of the Pacific. He may be a little tree dweller eighteen inches long, plus a twelve inch tail. He may be a giant, six feet long, too heavy to climb a tree.
There are many pangolin cousins, large and small, but all of them look alike. The bulky body stands on four stubby legs and tapers to a long, slender snout. As he ambles clumsily along, he drags behind him a tapering tail which is sometimes longer than his head and body.
The most remarkable feature of the pangolin is the scales which cover what you can see of him from his head to the tip of his tapering tail. They are overlapping triangles of horny plate, sometimes five inches wide and three inches long. These scales make him look like a pine cone, but they are far more dangerous than a pine cone. Each is pointed with a sharp tip and bordered with knife sharp edges.
The underside of the pangolin is bare. When threatened, he rolls into a ball with his knives on edge an the soft underside safely inside. He also may lash his sturdy tail, trying to trap the leg of his enemy. When this happens, he uses his daggers to saw and saw.
If the enemy escapes he may limp away on three legs and never attack a pangolin again.
The front legs of the pangolin are .fitted with mighty claws, the middle claw so long that he must turn it under and walk on the sides of his feet. When he finds an ant or termite nest, he uses his sturdy claws to rip it apart. He whips out his long, sticky tongue and gathers hundreds of ants, eggs and larvae, swallowing each mouthful at a gulp. For the pangolin has no teeth.
Pangolins are less plentiful than they once were. They are hunted for their meat and modern weapons are too much for them. Mrs. Pangolin has but one baby at a time. Twins are very rare. Junior is born with soft scales which harden in a few days. Soon Mama is taking him out riding, perched on her scaly tail. When trouble threatens, she furls her tail around and wraps Junior safely inside her ball of scaly knives.