#Angry giant pangolin skin

The rage in colonial India, a coat made of pangolin scales painted with gold was presented as a gift to King George III. And have even been used to simply make coats. Pangolin scales have been used to make armor. The scales are the toothless pangolin’s only protection.

#Angry giant pangolin skin

Other less formalized, but now widely-promoted claims are that the scales enhance blood circulation, help respiratory problems (a looming health problem in polluted regions of China), clear the skin and as mentioned above, can even cure cancer. The Journal of Chinese Medicine prescribes pangolin scales for promoting menstruation and lactation, reducing swelling, draining abscesses and for expelling ‘wind-dampness in the body’, which causes pain associated with rheumatism and arthritis. The pangolins are boiled to remove the scales, which are then dried, ground down and roasted. In traditional Chinese medicine, the scales are prescribed to treat a variety of conditions.

The tongue is dried and carried around in pockets as a good luck charm.īut all of these claims are mostly market-driven false advertising.

And many shops have the occasional gruesome offering of a baby pangolin floating in a jar of liquid.

Pangolin scales are sold in plain view in the street markets.

And the fetus is eaten as an aphrodisiac.

The skin is served in such dishes as stir-fried pangolin skin with onion and mushroom.

Restaurants selling pangolin dishes abound in the Vietnamese cities.

In fact, every part of a pangolin is marketed today as a consumer good. They are poached for the perceived healing benefits of their scales, as well as for the perceived delicacy of their meat. In 2017, authorities seized 32 tons of pangolin scales and 563 live pangolins in Southeast Asia and China.Īccording to recent research published by the Society for Conservation Biology, up to 2.7 million pangolins are being killed every year in Central Africa alone.

Although international trade has been largely outlawed since then, the illegal trade is booming. In 2016, it was estimated that one million pangolins were being killed annually. The most trafficked animal in the world: What are pangolins poached for? Some can even swing from tree to tree with their tails.Other pangolins sleep in the hollows of trees or logs and some simply make a nest in the forks of trees.Pangolins dig very deep burrows for sleeping that contain circular chambers, some so tall that a human could stand up in it once she has crawled inside.Asian pangolins have bristles emerging between scales.And becoming harder to find since they are on the brink of extinction. No one knows the natural life expectancy of a pangolin because they are so shy they are hard to find.A pangolin’s tongue starts at its pelvis and can be a foot long.

In the wild, a pangolin consumes an average of 70 million ants and termites per night.

If it’s daytime, a pangolin would rather be sleeping.

A pangolin may in time even cuddle with you, curling its long tail and small, hairy belly around you and clinging onto your arm with its paws and claws.

They ride on their mother’s backs, no small feat balancing on hard, moving scales, just climbing back up each time they fall off.

But pangolins can learn to trust the trustworthy.

If you approach a pangolin, it will either hide under a very safe cover or if there is not one, roll into a roly-poly, armored-side out until you finally leave it alone.

They can look like little waddling dragons.

A pangolin can get so stressed out outside of its natural environment that it dies.