“A walking artichoke that licks ants and rolls into an uncrackable ball.”

Imagine a pinecone decided to become a mammal and you've basically got a pangolin. Covered head to tail in overlapping keratin scales — the same stuff as your fingernails — it's the only mammal wearing full plate armor. When threatened it tucks into a ball so tight that even lions eventually give up and wander off, looking embarrassed. It has no teeth, so it vacuums up tens of thousands of ants and termites a day with a sticky tongue that can be longer than its own body and anchors down near its pelvis. Shy, nocturnal, and almost unbearably polite about everything, the pangolin asks for nothing except to be left alone to eat insects in peace.

Scientific name

Manis

Size

House-cat sized.

Habitat

Forests and grasslands across Africa and Asia.

Diet

Ants and termites, by the tens of thousands.

Conservation

CR · Critically Endangered

Picnic threat level

Picnic threat: zero. Would politely become a ball and leave.

U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons · Learn more →