Feb. 15 is World Pangolin Day

A pangolin is the only scaled mammal alive and the most trafficked mammal on earth. It looks like a very large pinecone mouse. Feb. 15 was World Pangolin Day.

A nickname for the pangolin is "the scaly anteater," and that's basically what it is. Its diet consists entirely of ants and termites. The pangolin can eat 20,000 ants a day and nearly 70,000,000 a year. A pangolin's tongue is longer than its body, and they use it to stick their tongues down ant or termite mounds or hollow logs where ants live to slurp them up. Pangolin mothers carry their pups on the base of their tail.

Three pangolin species are critically endangered, three are endangered and two are vulnerable due to poaching and deforestation. Pangolins are a keystone species. A keystone species is a species of animal in an ecosystem and, in that ecosystem, the animal is crucial to the ecosystem's survival.

For example, without the wolf, there would be too many deer and the deer would overpopulate the forests and eat all the plants, making it hard for other species to survive but also a large new population of deer. So, without the keystone species, ecosystems would be dramatically different or completely nonexistent.

The pangolin is a keystone species because it stops the ants from overpopulating. Though there are estimated about 200,000 pangolin left in the wild, it was also estimated that over 1,000,000 pangolins have been taken from the wild due to illegal wildlife trade. In China, some people believe that pangolin scales have medicinal properties. The scales, however, are made out of the same thing as human fingernails, human hair and rhino horn, so they might as well chew their fingernails.

In Africa and China, the pangolins meat is served as a delicacy to the rich. The tribal people hunt pangolins due to their traditional beliefs that pangolin meat and scales are good luck, and the poor can sell a pangolin's scales and meat on the market – poaching pangolin is not illegal in some places – for about a week's worth of money to buy food for their family. Pangolins live in China, Africa, the Philippines, India, Vietnam, Sumatra, Borneo and Thailand. Since the pangolin does eat about 20,000 ants per day, you can imagine how hard it is to raise just a single one in captivity.

Some experts consider pangolins "the hardest animal by far to raise in captivity." That's probably why I have only heard of six zoos on planet Earth that feature a pangolin, although there might be more.

Nothing is known about the pangolin's lifespan in the wild; it may be well over 20 years. The longest captive pangolin's age was 19-20 years. It was a ground pangolin. If you want more information about the pangolin, visit the YouTube channel, The D.N, at https://youtu.be/CnhAupl6N50. From there, you can find listed other informational and conservational channels where you can learn more about the pangolin and how you can help it to survive.

Simon Jimenez is a 10-year-old who lives in Fallbrook and is passionate about saving the pangolin.