World's Most Trafficked Mammal

Many people in the West have never even heard of the pangolin, yet this “scaly anteater” is the source of a billion-dollar criminal industry that threatens to push it to extinction. BBC Future met a team of Hong Kong’s ecologists and activists trying to save these creatures from extinction.

For millions of years, the pangolin’s natural reserve had been its best defence. The only mammal with hard, plate-like scales, it looks something like a badger in chainmail – and at the merest hint of danger, the pangolin simply roles up into a tight ball that is nearly impossible for a predator to penetrate. The shell is so tough that it can even resist the teeth of lions, tigers and leopards.
Not that many scientists have even been able to witness this behaviour themselves. There are eight species of pangolin across Asia and Africa, and they are all nocturnal, and notoriously shy, hiding in burrows and hollow trees for most of the day. Even conservationists working extensively in their natural habitats often struggle to catch sight of one. “I don’t think I’ve ever met someone who’s seen a wild pangolin,” says Timothy Bonebrake, a biologist at Hong Kong University (HKU).

This natural shyness may help the pangolin to hide from a careful conservationist, but it is no match for the more determined poacher. Using its distinctive footprint – the front claw curves inwards as it walks – to identify a local population, the hunter can then use trained dogs to sniff them out of their burrows, or a trap to capture them as they snuffle for food at night. Bonebrake remembers seeing the poachers at the side of the road in Cameroon, holding the pangolins by their tails as they flaunted them for sale.

Decades ago, those animals may have just ended up in the local market; today, the majority are exported thousands of miles across the globe. Most consumers come from mainland China and Vietnam, where the keratin scales are an important ingredient for traditional medicines, and the meat is often prized as a delicacy at banquets. Ideally, the live pangolin is presented at the dinner table before the chef slits its throat in front of the guests, as a guarantee of the meat’s freshness. And as the pangolin populations in Asia dwindle, more and more are now being captured in Africa to meet the demand.

In total, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature estimates that a million pangolins may have crossed international borders in the last decade – making them the world’s most trafficked mammal.