Pangolins look like a cross between a pinecone, an anteater, and a small dinosaur. They live in Africa and Asia, and they are the only mammal on Earth covered in real scales. The scales are made of keratin, the same stuff your fingernails are made of, layered into hard overlapping plates.
When a pangolin is scared, it rolls itself into a tight armored ball with its tail wrapped over its face. The scales are so sharp and tough that lions and tigers often just give up trying to bite through. That’s where their name comes from - the Malay word pengguling, meaning “the roller.”
Pangolins eat almost nothing but ants and termites. They rip open nests with claws like little crowbars and slurp up the insects with a tongue so long it’s anchored not in the mouth but in the chest. A single pangolin can eat tens of millions of ants in a year - natural pest control on legs.
