Hello friends and loved ones on the steemit community, I am here again to give us some education on some of the things that exists, but we know little or nothing about.
What’s that? I call it the Innocent Ant Eater, it’s known as #Pangolin
We rarely know of this animal, Pangolin. Pangolins are mammals with several species. They include the extant family, Manidae , which has three genera;
#Manis, comprises four species living in Asia;
#Phataginus, comprises two species living in Africa; and
#Smutsia, comprises two species also living in Africa.
This animal is listed as critically endangered, due to the rate at which human activities is affecting their existence, and might cause their going into extinction, if care isn’t taken.
The name pangolin comes from the Malay word pengguling , meaning "one who rolls up". But however, the modern name in Standard Malay is tenggiling , whereas in Indonesian it is trenggiling .
#Pangolins; How do they look like
Image Source: en.wikipedia.org
Pangolins are mammals with rodent like appearance. They have a large hardened plate-like scales which are overlapped against each other.
Just like the porcupines whose spikes in the newborns are soft, but get hardened as they mature, same thing with pangolins; the scales are soft on their newborns, but becomes hardened ad they mature.
Image Source: npr.org
The scales of a pangolin are made of keratin. (The same material of which human fingernails are made).
Pangolins curl up like a ball just like the meaning of the origin of the name implies; Penggulung- one who rolls up.
They do this (curl up like a ball) when threatened. Then its overlapping scales acts as armor, while it protects its face by tucking it under its tail.
The scales of pangolin are sharp, which it uses in providing extra defense from predators.
One thing about their scales is, since they go around ants and termites a lot, because they feed on them, their scales protects them from been harmed by these termites. You might wonder how.
Do you know that termites kill big animals even snakes, but the scale on pangolins which is hard makes the termites stings on them have no effect at all.
Pangolins have short legs and sharp claws. These sharp claws helps them in burrowing and in climbing.
Pangolins burrow into ant-hills and termite mounds. I’m sure you know how strong ant and termite mounds are, with this pangolins burrow into them, with the help of their sharp claws.
They’ve long sticky tongues, which could be twice as long as their body. They use this tongue to catch their preys, ants and termites to feed on them. The insects sticks on their tongues after they’ve stretched their tongues inside the insect tunnels.
Amazingly too, this animals hang and trees with their tails and strip off the bark of trees just in order to expose insects that have built nests inside the trees.
Pangolins are actually nocturnal animals; I mean they are more active at night. They spend most of the day time sleeping, curled up as ball.
Pangolins are good in swimming, they stay on land more. And you can either find them living under the soil, where they’ve burrowed, or inside trees (hollow trees).
A lot of people mistake this animal to armadillo, but they are quite different in times of diet, habit, and regions of existence.
Pangolins feed majorly on ants and termites, that’s the more reason why it’s difficult to raise pangolin in enclosures, it’s best to leave them to range freely.
Let me explain further, this animal feeds on 140-200grams of ants/termites daily. That’s about 20,000 ants every day. How do you want to get that for them, it’s best you just allow them hunt for themselves, or else they die from starvation, because of you. (Smiles)
This animal will finish about 70 million ants in a year. Si, if you want to eradicate ants around you, without spending much, get a pangolin and introduce it into your area.
They’ve very great sense of smell which they use to get where ants and termites are. So they use that to hunt for food.
Though their vision and sense of hearing is quite poor, but they rely majorly on their sense of smelling.
Pangolins are not harmful to humans; rather, they are endangered by humans.
-They curl up like a ball when they feel threatened, so you can carry them without them harming you.
-They can climb on your body and you play with them, and they won’t harm you at all
The major challenge about this dear animal is, the hunt for it is very high and quite outrageous,
-As humans hunt for it for food. Humans feed on pangolins as meat. So, we hunt for it., especially in Africa, China and Vietnam.
-Infact, currently in China, it has almost gone into extinction, so they import it, because of the great usefulness of this animal, the economic importance, as it is used for food, medicine and also the scales are used for other things such as clothings.
-In some part of Africa, some traditional healers use them for traditional medicine to heal people.
Let me surprise you, do you know that as humans are been trafficked, animals too are been trafficked. And amazingly, Pangolins are the most trafficked animals in the world.
Image Source: IFAW
Because of these, World Pangolin Day was brought up and this is practiced in every part of the country where pangolin can be found.
It is celebrated every 3rd Saturday of February. The last one was celebrated on the 17th of February, 2018. In South West Nigeria, it was greatly celebrated at OLUSEGUN OBASNAJO ZOOLOGICAL GARDEN AND RESORT. (A lovely place you would want to visit, it contains a resort, presidential library, zoological garden and many more facilities you would love to explore).
The World Pangolin Day, is a way of sensitizing people about conservation of pangolin, the innocent ant eater. As the animal is decreasing and might go into extinction if not cautioned.
The highest demand for Pangolin comes greatly from China, as they use them for medicine and meat.
And amazingly, pangolin is served in restaurants in Vietnam.
References: Sources of some little extracts I got outside personal research
www.pangolins.org
"Search result for "Pangolin". iUCN Red List of Threatened Species . Retrieved 12 January 2016.
Wikipedia
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Love you all. Watch out for more on other animals you rarely know about.