A pangolin is a shy, night-time mammal covered in hard scales made of keratin, the same material as your fingernails. There are eight species, four in Asia and four in Africa. Pangolins have no teeth. They eat ants and termites with a tongue up to 41 cm long. All eight species are threatened with extinction.
Pangolins quick facts
- Pangolins are the only mammals covered in scales.
- A pangolin’s tongue can be up to 41 cm long, and it has no teeth at all.
- The scales make up about 20% of a pangolin’s weight.
- A Chinese pangolin can be pregnant for up to 372 days.
- In 2023, scientists proposed a ninth pangolin species known only from scales seized from smugglers.
What is a pangolin?
These pangolin facts for kids start with what everyone notices first. A pangolin looks like a pine cone with legs.
It is covered from head to tail in hard, overlapping scales. Underneath, it is a mammal, just like a dog or a person. It breathes air and feeds its babies milk.
Britannica says the name pangolin comes from a Malay word meaning “rolling over”. That describes its best-known trick. When a pangolin is scared, it curls up into a tight, scaly ball.
Pangolins are sometimes called scaly anteaters, because they eat ants and termites. They are shy. They usually live alone, and they come out mostly at night. That makes them very hard to study, and WWF says little is known about them in the wild.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature, or IUCN, recognises eight species. Four live in Asia and four live in Africa. All eight are threatened with extinction.
Armour made of the same stuff as your nails
A pangolin’s scales are made of keratin. The IUCN pangolin experts say it is the same tough material as your fingernails and a rhino‘s horn.
The scales are heavy, too. The African Wildlife Foundation says they make up about 20% of a pangolin’s weight. For a pangolin weighing 10 kg, that is 2 kg of armour.
Scales are the pangolin’s main defence. WWF says a startled pangolin first covers its head with its front legs, so only its scales face the danger. If it is touched or grabbed, it rolls up completely. The sharp scales on its tail can lash out at an attacker.
A pangolin has one more trick. Britannica says it can give off a strong-smelling liquid from large glands at the back of its body.
Even so, armour does not stop everything. Britannica says big predators such as leopards, lions, tigers and hyenas are sometimes strong enough to break through.
How big is a pangolin?
Pangolins come in very different sizes. The African Wildlife Foundation gives lengths of 30 to 152 cm (12 to 60 inches). It gives weights of 1.5 to 33 kg (3.5 to 73 pounds).
So the smallest pangolins are about as long as a school ruler. They weigh little more than a bag of sugar. The biggest are longer than many children are tall, and as heavy as a big dog.
As its name suggests, the giant pangolin of Africa is one of the biggest. It lives on the ground.
No teeth and a very long tongue
Pangolins eat almost nothing but ants and termites. The IUCN pangolin experts say they feed “almost exclusively” on these insects. Britannica says termites are the main part of the meal.
Finding food starts with the nose. Britannica says a pangolin sniffs out a nest by smell, then uses its strong front feet to rip it open.
Next comes the tongue. The African Wildlife Foundation says a pangolin’s tongue can be up to 41 cm long. That is longer than a school ruler. The pangolin pushes it deep into the tunnels of a nest and licks up the insects inside.
Pangolins have no teeth at all. They cannot chew, so they swallow their food whole.
Imagine eating your dinner with no teeth and a tongue as long as your arm. For a pangolin, that is every night.
All eight pangolin species
Scientists put the eight living species into three groups, called genera. Britannica names them as Manis, Phataginus and Smutsia. The Asian pangolins all belong to Manis. The African ones belong to Phataginus and Smutsia.
| Pangolin | Scientific name | Where it lives | IUCN status (2019) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chinese pangolin | Manis pentadactyla | Asia | Critically Endangered |
| Philippine pangolin | Manis culionensis | Asia | Critically Endangered |
| Sunda pangolin | Manis javanica | Asia | Critically Endangered |
| Indian pangolin | Manis crassicaudata | Asia | Endangered |
| White-bellied pangolin | Phataginus tricuspis | Africa | Endangered |
| Giant pangolin | Smutsia gigantea | Africa | Endangered |
| Black-bellied pangolin | Phataginus tetradactyla | Africa | Vulnerable |
| Temminck’s pangolin | Smutsia temminckii | Africa | Vulnerable |
The IUCN updated its checks on every species in December 2019. Three are Critically Endangered. That is the most serious level before a species dies out in the wild. Three are Endangered and two are Vulnerable.
The three Critically Endangered species all live in Asia. The IUCN pangolin experts say heavy hunting has made them disappear from some places altogether.
Where pangolins live
Pangolins live in the warm, tropical parts of Asia and Africa. Britannica says some are almost entirely tree-dwelling, such as the black-bellied pangolin of Africa. Others, such as the giant pangolin, live on the ground and shelter in burrows.
Pangolins can even swim a little, Britannica says.
Ground pangolins need soft earth to dig in. The African Wildlife Foundation says pangolins prefer sandy soils, and are found in woodlands and savannas.
Most pangolins rest by day and come out after dark. The African Wildlife Foundation says they stay in their burrows during the day and come out at night to hunt.
The Chinese pangolin has a clever plan for winter. The IUCN pangolin experts say it spends the cold months in deep burrows that stay at a steady temperature. It digs them near termite nests, so its food is close by.
Pangolin babies
A pangolin mother usually has just one baby at a time. Britannica says a few Asian species sometimes have two or three.
The baby is small. The African Wildlife Foundation says a newborn is about 15 cm long and weighs about 85 to 450 g (3 to 16 ounces). Britannica says its scales are soft when it is born.
Soon the baby goes everywhere with its mother. Britannica says it is carried on her back. The African Wildlife Foundation says it may ride on the base of her tail.
Some mothers wait a very long time for their baby to arrive. The IUCN pangolin experts say a Chinese pangolin is pregnant for between 318 and 372 days. That can be longer than a whole year.
Nobody knows how long pangolins live in the wild. Britannica says some have lived as long as 20 years in zoos.
Not an anteater, not an armadillo
Pangolins look a bit like armadillos and eat like anteaters. For a long time, scientists put them in the same group as anteaters, sloths and armadillos.
Britannica says that was a mistake. The likeness is only on the outside. Inside, pangolins differ in many basic ways, so they now have a group of mammals of their own, called Pholidota.
It is a very old group. Britannica says the oldest known fossils come from Germany. They date from the middle of the Eocene epoch, which ran from about 56 to 34 million years ago.
New pangolins found in seized scales
Eight may not be the final count. In 2023, a team led by Tong-Tong Gu published a study in the journal PNAS. It looked at pangolin scales that had been taken from smugglers.
The scales were seized in Hong Kong in 2012 and 2013, and in Yunnan, China, in 2015 and 2019. When the team read the DNA, some scales did not match any known pangolin.
They called the mystery animal the Asian mysterious pangolin, or Manis mysteria. Nobody has ever seen one alive. It is known only from those scales.
The scientists were careful. They called the name tentative, and said a full description will need a whole animal. WWF lists a second possible new species too, the Indo-Burmese pangolin. It says more research is needed on both.
The count keeps shifting. Britannica reports a 2026 study with strong evidence that the Himalayan pangolin is a species of its own. Until then it was treated as a kind of Chinese pangolin.
Why pangolins are in danger
WWF calls pangolins the most trafficked mammal in the world. Trafficking means catching and selling wild animals against the law.
They are hunted for two things. In some places, pangolin meat is eaten as an expensive luxury. The scales are used in traditional medicines in parts of Asia and Africa.
Those medicines do not work. The IUCN pangolin experts point out that the scales are keratin, like fingernails, and that there is no scientific evidence they help. Our guide to what diseases pangolin scales are said to cure looks at the claims one by one.
The numbers are huge. The IUCN pangolin experts say the equivalent of more than 895,000 pangolins were trafficked around the world between 2000 and 2019. In Central Africa alone, at least 400,000 are hunted and eaten locally every year.
The demand is not only in Asia and Africa. WWF says people in the United States buy pangolin leather for boots, bags and belts.
Pangolins cannot bounce back quickly. A mother usually has one baby at a time, and some species are pregnant for up to a year. Every pangolin taken from the wild is hard to replace.
How the law protects pangolins
Pangolins are protected by an international agreement called CITES. It controls trade in wild animals and plants between countries, so that trade does not drive species to extinction.
Every pangolin species was added to CITES Appendix II in 1995. That meant trade had to be closely controlled. In 2000, countries agreed that no wild Asian pangolins would be exported for trade. That was almost a ban.
It was not enough. In 2016, at a meeting in Johannesburg, South Africa, all eight species were moved to Appendix I. That banned international commercial trade in wild pangolins and their parts.
Countries have acted as well. WWF says that since 2020, China has given the Chinese pangolin its highest level of protection. It no longer allows pangolin scales in traditional medicine.
Laws only work when people obey them. The IUCN pangolin experts say pangolins are protected in most of the countries where they live, yet illegal hunting and trade carry on.
| Year | What happened |
|---|---|
| 1995 | All pangolin species added to CITES Appendix II, so trade must be closely controlled |
| 2000 | No wild Asian pangolins to be exported for trade |
| 2016 | All eight species moved to CITES Appendix I, banning international commercial trade |
| 2019 | IUCN lists three species as Critically Endangered, three as Endangered and two as Vulnerable |
| 2020 | China gives the Chinese pangolin its highest protection and drops scales from traditional medicine |
| 2023 | Scientists propose a ninth species, known only from seized scales |
Three things people get wrong
Pangolins are not reptiles. Their scales make them look like lizards, but WWF says they are mammals. They feed their babies milk.
Pangolins are not anteaters. They eat ants and have the nickname scaly anteater, but Britannica says the likeness is only on the surface. Pangolins have their own order of mammals, Pholidota.
Pangolin scales are not medicine. They are keratin, like your fingernails. There is no scientific evidence that they cure anything.
Did you know? The name pangolin comes from a Malay word meaning “rolling over”, after the way the animal curls into a ball when it is scared.
Try it
Hold your hands about 41 cm apart, a little more than a school ruler. That is how long a pangolin’s tongue can be. Now kneel, tuck your head under your arms and curl into a ball. That is how a pangolin hides behind its scales.
Knowledge check
What are pangolin scales made of?
Show answer
Keratin, the same tough material as your fingernails and a rhino’s horn.
What does a frightened pangolin do?
Show answer
It covers its head with its front legs and, if it is grabbed, rolls up into a tight, scaly ball.
Frequently asked questions
What is a pangolin?
A pangolin is a shy mammal covered in hard scales made of keratin. It comes out mostly at night and eats ants and termites. There are eight species, four in Asia and four in Africa.
How many species of pangolin are there?
Eight pangolin species are recognised, four in Asia and four in Africa. A ninth, the Asian mysterious pangolin, was proposed in 2023 from seized scales, but nobody has seen one alive.
What do pangolins eat?
Pangolins eat almost only ants and termites. They find nests by smell, rip them open with their strong front feet and lick up the insects with a tongue up to 41 cm long. Pangolins have no teeth.
Why are pangolins endangered?
Pangolins are hunted and trafficked for their meat and for their scales, which are used in traditional medicine. WWF calls them the most trafficked mammal in the world, and all eight species are threatened.
Are pangolins related to anteaters or armadillos?
Pangolins are not closely related to anteaters or armadillos. They were once grouped with them because they look alike, but Britannica says they differ in many basic ways and have their own order, Pholidota.
How do baby pangolins get around?
Baby pangolins ride on their mother’s back, and may hold on near the base of her tail. A mother usually has one baby at a time, and its scales are soft when it is born.
Sources
- IUCN SSC Pangolin Specialist Group: pangolins — keratin scales, a diet of ants and termites, the eight species and their 2019 Red List status, trafficking numbers, traditional medicine and the CITES listings of 1995, 2000 and 2016
- IUCN SSC Pangolin Specialist Group: Chinese pangolin — its 318 to 372 day pregnancy and its winter burrows near termite nests
- Encyclopaedia Britannica: pangolin — the name, the three genera, tree and ground pangolins, swimming, finding food by smell, defences and predators, babies, lifespan in zoos, relatives, fossils and the 2026 Himalayan pangolin study
- WWF: pangolin — behaviour, how a pangolin defends itself, the most trafficked mammal, the two possible new species, leather sold in the US and China’s 2020 protection
- African Wildlife Foundation: pangolin — size and weight, tongue length, no teeth, scales as a share of body weight, habitat, night-time hunting and newborns
- Gu and others: Genomic analysis reveals a cryptic pangolin species (PNAS, 2023), on PubMed Central — the Asian mysterious pangolin, tentatively named and known only from scales seized in Hong Kong and Yunnan
