Animal · South Africa, Zimbabwe, Zambia
Ground pangolin
Smutsia temminckii — the name this animal has in the language scientists everywhere share.
The ground pangolin is a shy African mammal covered in hard scales of keratin, the same material as our fingernails. It walks upright on its hind legs and rolls into a tight ball when something frightens it.
Picture credit: David Brossard (CC BY-SA 2.0) · flowcomm (CC BY 2.0) · Wikimedia Commons
Where does the ground pangolin live?
Home: Dry savanna and bush country of southern Africa.
In the wild it lives in these countries: South Africa, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Botswana, Namibia, Mozambique, Tanzania, Kenya.
Conservation status from the IUCN: vulnerable.
The short profile
Fully grown: 30-90 cm body, plus a tail of 26-70 cm. It weighs about 12 kilograms. On the menu: insects.
The story behind it
A pangolin has no teeth at all. It rips open ant and termite nests with long front claws and licks the insects up with a sticky tongue, picking only certain kinds instead of eating whatever is nearest. Its armour is made of overlapping scales that together weigh about a fifth of the whole animal. When it walks it holds the front claws off the ground and balances on its hind legs with the tail behind, and it spends the day asleep in a burrow. Rolled up, it is safe from a lion, but that is exactly what makes it easy for a person to lift up and carry away. Pangolins are the most trafficked wild mammals in the world, taken for their scales and their meat, and this species is now listed as vulnerable.
Find it on the globe
Ground pangolin is there as a tiny animated figure that breathes and looks around. From far away the planet is only a blue ball; detail arrives as you zoom in, and this one appears once you are close enough. Open it on the globe.
It sits at its real coordinates, not near them — the same numbers listed in the facts above. Switch off the layer for this kind of place and it disappears again; the buttons for that are down the right-hand edge.
Questions children ask
Why does a pangolin roll into a ball?
Because then only the hard scales are on the outside and the soft belly is hidden inside. A lion or a hyena cannot get the ball open, so the trick works against almost every wild hunter.
What does a pangolin eat?
Ants and termites, and nothing else. It has no teeth, so it opens the nest with its claws and gathers the insects with a long sticky tongue.
Why are pangolins in danger?
They are hunted and smuggled more than any other wild mammal, for their scales and their meat. Rolling into a ball is no defence against people, and the loss of bush country makes it worse.
Where these numbers come from
Every figure on this page was checked against public reference sources before publication. Where sources genuinely disagree, the text says so.
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