Animal Diversity Web

Pan­golins are a small group (eight liv­ing species placed in one genus and one fam­ily, Manidae) of mam­mals that feed mostly on ants. They are found in the trop­i­cal re­gions of Africa and Asia.

Pan­golins are con­spic­u­ous and re­mark­able be­cause their backs are cov­ered with large, over­lap­ping scales made up of ag­glu­ti­nated hairs. But they are strange in other ways as well. Their tongue is ex­tra­or­di­nar­ily long and mus­cu­lar, aris­ing from the pelvis and the last pair of ribs deep in the an­i­mal's chest. As a re­sult, the tongue and as­so­ci­ated mus­cles are longer than the an­i­mal's head and body, al­low­ing the tongue to be ex­truded to an as­ton­ish­ing de­gree. Pan­golins lack teeth. In­stead, the the py­loric part of their stom­ach is thick­ened and mus­cu­lar, with odd ker­ati­nous spines pro­ject­ing into its in­te­rior. It usu­ally con­tains peb­bles and seems to be used for "chew­ing" in much the same way as a bird's giz­zard. Pan­golins have the abil­ity to close their ears and nos­trils as well as eyes, pre­sum­ably to keep ants out.

The skull of pan­golins is smoothly con­i­cal, lack­ing the ridges and crests found on most mam­malian cra­nia. The palate is long, but not as long as the palate of myrme­cophagids, and un­like mem­bers of that group it does not in­cor­po­rate the ptery­goids. They have no jugal and the zy­go­matic arch is in­com­plete. The mandible is nar­row and weak. It lacks an­gu­lar and coro­noid processes but has an un­usual con­i­cal pro­jec­tion at its an­te­rior end on the upper (dor­sal) sur­face.

Ex­ter­nally, the scales ex­tend from the head, down the back to or al­most to the tip of the long tail. Be­neath, pan­golins lack scales but have a sparse coat of fur. Their limbs are stout and well adapted for dig­ging. Claws are large, sharp, and re­curved. Pan­golins range in size from about 1.6kg to a max­i­mum of about 33kg.

Some species of pan­golins are ar­bo­real, oth­ers are ter­res­trial. Two species have semi­prehen­sile tails, used in climb­ing. Their scales pro­vide good de­fense against preda­tors. When threat­ened, pan­golins curl into a ball, pro­tect­ing their scale­less un­der­sur­face and some­times rolling down a steep slope. They lash about dan­ger­ously with their tails, which are cov­ered with sharp-edged scales. They may also spray a foul-smelling liq­uid from their anal glands. Pan­golins have rel­a­tively poor vi­sion and hear­ing; they prob­a­bly lo­cate their prey by scent.

The re­la­tion­ship of pan­golins to other groups of mam­mals is not clear. Their fos­sil record ex­tends to the Eocene.

Tech­ni­cal char­ac­ters

Lit­er­a­ture and ref­er­ences cited

Feld­hamer, G. A., L. C. Drick­amer, S. H. Vessey, and J. F. Mer­ritt. 1999. Mam­mal­ogy. Adap­ta­tion, Di­ver­sity, and Ecol­ogy. WCB Mc­Graw-Hill, Boston. xii+563pp.

Bar­low, J. C. 1984. Xe­narthrans and pholi­dotes. Pp. 219-239 in An­der­son, S. and J. K. Jones, Jr. (eds). Or­ders and Fam­i­lies of Re­cent Mam­mals of the World. John Wiley and Sons, N.Y. xii+686 pp.

Sav­age, R. J. G. and M. R. Long. 1986. Mam­mal Evo­lu­tion, an Il­lus­trated Guide. Facts of File Pub­li­ca­tions, New York. 259 pp.

Vaughan, T. A. 1986. Mam­mal­ogy. Third Edi­tion. Saun­ders Col­lege Pub­lish­ing, Fort Worth. vii+576 pp.

Vaughan, T. A., J. M. Ryan, N. J. Czaplewski. 2000. Mam­mal­ogy. Fourth Edi­tion. Saun­ders Col­lege Pub­lish­ing, Philadel­phia. vii+565pp.

Wil­son, D. E., and D. M. Reeder. 1993. Mam­mal Species of the World, A Tax­o­nomic and Ge­o­graphic Ref­er­ence. 2nd edi­tion. Smith­son­ian In­sti­tu­tion Press, Wash­ing­ton. xviii+1206 pp.

Con­trib­u­tors

Phil Myers (au­thor), Mu­seum of Zo­ol­ogy, Uni­ver­sity of Michi­gan-Ann Arbor.