 Rolled into a ball, but junior wants in.
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THE ORDER PHOLIDOTA: In the tropical and subtropical regions of southern Asia and Africa are found seven species that constitute the entire order of Pholidota. These scaly anteaters are mainly terrestrial creatures, but are also arboreal at times, and they look like walking pinecones. Once grouped with the other anteaters in the order Edentata, which is Latin for "knocked out teeth" since they have no teeth, biologists have recently given the Pangolins their own order, and have replaced the Edentata order with the order Xenarthra.
The scales are modified hair and shield the animal from enemies, especially when it curls itself into a tight coil or ball. "Pangolin" is a malaysian word for "roll into a ball." Like so many other natural curiosities such as Rhinoceros horn, the Chinese people feel that the ground up scales of the pangolin are medicinally good, and they are hunted for those scales. Pangolins are also hunted for their meat, but it is the loss of their natural habitat by encroaching civilization that most directly endangers the future of the pangolin.
The pangolin can extend its razor-edged scales, and by lashing with its tail can inflict quite serious gashes in an enemy. Some species, just as the skunks, are able to spray their enemies with a foulsmelling liquid produced by glands near the anus. Add to this the ability to roll into an armored ball, and the pangolin is not threatened with being pushed out by any other order of mammals.
Clumsy looking, but agile in the trees.
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Its limbs are strong, and the heavy tail, though not prehensile, acts as further support when the pangolin rears up on its hind legs to tear away at the termite mounds or fallen logs with its sicklelike claws in search of ants and termites, its principal diet. It will eat other small insects as well. Since the pangolin has no teeth, its stomach is provided with thick, muscular walls and contains small pebbles which grind up the insects, much like a bird's gizzard. The exceptionally long, whiplike tongue is anchored to the pelvis!
Many of the peculiar adaptations to its specialized diet of ants, such as long snout and tongue, sharp digging claws, absence of teeth, and even its protective shell of scales and ability to roll up into a ball are very suggestive of the Xenarthrans, but it is interesting to note, that the two orders are not closely related. Like the aardvark, the pangolin is a prime examples of convergent evolution - two different types of animals arriving at the same form through natural selection.
Scaly anteaters, or pangolins, are not considered to be close relatives of the anteaters or armadillos, which are now grouped with sloths (Xenarthra).
Check out the Pangolin in the zoo.
Or check out the Xenarthra order with similar looking Armadillos.
Or just flip to the index to find the other Armadillos.
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