📸 PhotoPhoto: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Headquarters · CC BY 2.0 · Wikimedia Commons Source
Short-tailed Pangolin
Manis pentadactyla (Short-tailed Pangolin · ミミセンザンコウ)
💡 Everyday Comparisons for Size, Mass & Speed
- 💡 Its maximum weight of 7 kg is about 7 tenths of a 10 kg bag of rice (Comparison).
- 💡 Because of high illegal trade driven by demand for meat and traditional medicine, news of smuggled pangolins being seized appears frequently.
Reference standards: coach bus ~12 m, mid-size car ~4.9 m, compact car ~1 t, basketball hoop 3.05 m, credit card 8.56 cm.
Site-computed relative index from recorded values; not a formal scientific metric.
📖 1. Overview
The Short-tailed Pangolin is a scale-covered ant and termite hunter living in southern China, Taiwan, Indochina, and Nepal.
🦴 2. Anatomy & Morphology
Round dark-brown to gray scales cover its body in 15–17 rows, and the three middle claws on its forefeet are long (up to 5 cm). Fine hairs protrude between the scales.
🔍 3. Ecology & Behavior
Active alone at night, it eats mainly ants in summer and termites in winter, digging into the ground to reach their nests. Females give birth to a single young and spend the winter together in the mother's burrow.
🇰🇷 4. Connection to Korea
No direct record connecting this species to Korea has been found.
📚 Sources & References
- • IUCN Red List CR (2019) — https://www.iucnredlist.org/species/12764/168392151
- • IUCN Red List category CR — latest assessment at iucnredlist.org
- • mammaldiversity.org — 1005797
- • iucnredlist.org — 168392151
- • wikidata.org — Q842283
- • commons.wikimedia.org — File:Manis pentadactyla (29054818144).jpg
- • tb.plazi.org — EC7D87A1FFF3FF8EE27AF972CC61F9BD
- • animaldiversity.org — Manis pentadactyla
- • Silhouette: PhyloPic — Steven Traver · CC0 1.0 (Congeneric silhouette — Manis culionensis)
Recorded dimensions are widely cited representative estimates from public literature and may vary by study or specimen.