Classroom lesson 路 Wildlife馃嚫馃嚞 Singapore

Sunda pangolin - the scaly anteater

The only mammal in the world covered in scales

A Sunda pangolin walking on the forest floor

Photo 路 Wikimedia Commons

What is it?

A pangolin is a small, shy, night-time animal that looks a bit like a pinecone with legs. It is the only mammal in the world whose body is covered in scales - made of the same stuff as your fingernails. Sunda pangolins live in Singapore's nature reserves and are very rare.

Tell me more

A grown-up Sunda pangolin is about the size of a small dog. When it feels scared, it doesn't run away. It curls into a tight, scaly ball - so tight that even a tiger struggles to get into it. The scales on the outside are like a suit of armour.

Pangolins are completely toothless. They have an extra-long sticky tongue - longer than their body - which they roll into ants' nests and termite mounds. A single pangolin can eat 70 million ants and termites in a year. That's a lot of garden pest control.

They are mostly active at night. By day they sleep curled up in burrows or in the hollow of a tree. Babies ride on their mum's tail like a tiny pinecone hitching a lift. The mother carries her baby this way for the first few months until it is big enough to walk on its own.

Sunda pangolins are very rare and need protecting. Singapore is one of the few cities in the world where they still survive in the wild. There is even a Pangolin Conservation Programme that rescues injured ones and releases them back into the nature reserves.

In the classroom

Walk your class through this in 15 minutes.

Talk together

Discussion prompts

  1. 01Most mammals have fur. Why might scales be useful for a pangolin instead?
  2. 02Pangolins don't fight back when scared - they curl up. Can you think of other animals that protect themselves by hiding rather than fighting?
  3. 03Why might it matter that pangolins eat 70 million ants a year?
Try this

Classroom activity

On a sheet of paper, design your own armour for a small animal. It must do three things: be light, let the animal still walk, and protect it. Label each piece. Pin all the designs up and 'vote' which looks safest.