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Hey guys!
The other night I asked you on Facebook and Twitter
to decide between a polar bear, a sloth,
and a pangolin.
and the winner is...
Just kidding.
The title of the episode is "pangolins".
I get a lot of questions about what
my favorite specimen is in the collection
and after much deliberation and serious consideration
I came to the conclusion that it is probably the pangolin
and this is for a multitude of reasons
For one, I'm really surprised that we have one in our collection
because pangolins are typically found
in parts of Africa and different tropical parts of Asia
so the fact that we have one in Montana
is a little unlikely, and really cool
Another reason I like pangolins is because
they are very unique looking
They have a couple of different kinds of common names
sometimes they're called "the walking artichoke"
or "anteater pine cones"
because that's what they basically look like
they are covered in keratin scales
and keratin - if you watched the last episode -
you know, is modified hair and fingernails
so they have this armor
that covers the entirety of their body
excluding their soft bellies
it acts as armored defense against predators
they have really long tails that they can
curl over their heads when they're threatened
and they kind of hide in these little balls
and the scales on their tail are
cerated to a certain extent
so they also will wiggle their tails around
and act as a weapon
Another reason I really like pangolins
is because they are one of the only mammals
that walks bipedally
You might notice that they have
really formidable looking claws on their forelimbs
but they don't really use these for fighting
and their claws are a little bit brittle
so they don't walk with putting any pressure on them
they kind of tuck them under their bodies
and then they'll hobble when they walk
and use their tail to help them balance
so they kind of look like little Hobbits
really adorable
they use these claws
for digging into termite and ant hill mounds
A single pangolin can consume
up to 70 millions ants by itself annually
and they do this because they have
the longest tongue relative to its body size
of any other mammal
Their tongue is so long
that it has muscle attachments on its pelvis
So they use this really long tongue
to stick it all the way down
into these ant hills
and suck up all these other ants
They don't have any teeth
so they will ingest rocks
and other kinds of hard materials
that help to grind up the ants in their stomachs
and even though the are primarily ant eaters
they aren't actually "anteaters" as you might know them
they are in totally different orders
than the giant anteater
or even armadillos
They're kind of like a mashup between an armadillo and an anteater
but they are physiologically so unique
that they're in their own order
As they are right now,
pangolins aren't on any kind of threatened or endangered species list
but hopefully that will change sometime soon
because they've been subjected
to a lot of poaching and illegal trafficking
For one thing, their meat is considered a delicacy
so they are hunted freely
without any kind of legal implications
Their scales - their keratin scales -
are also being used in Eastern medicine
and as we know,
from learning about rhino horns and rhino poaching
keratin has no medicinal value whatsoever
so it's a little unfortunate
that that's a misconception
and it's leading to fast population decline
with these species
however
with awareness we can hopefully change that
because pangolins are awesome
and I would love to see one someday
in person
not dead