‘Our singularity is our glory and our death warrant’: my week as a Chinese pangolin

I live in the shadow of death. So do we all, and I’m in no moral position to complain: after all, I’m responsible for 70m deaths a year. A rational creature like me has to accept that being killed to become a meal is all in a day’s work. What I can’t accept is that I’m more likely to die for a delusional fantasy.

Monday

A pangolin’s pride is the scale. I am defined by 18 rows of overlapping plates. I’m a walking fir cone, and when I curl up tight nothing can get me. We come in eight species across Africa and Asia and we revel in the unique nature of our order.

Tuesday

And so I spent my night shuffling cautiously over the ground, minding my own business, and a threat to nothing and no one that’s not an ant. No teeth, long sticky tongue to hoover them up: it’s a tried and tested system and it’s worked for millennia. We’re not related to anteaters or armadillos; our singularity is both our glory and our death warrant.

Wednesday

Can you imagine an animal stupid enough to believe that our scales can cure a million diseases? That you can grind them up and eat them and use them to cure cancer and tummy upsets, dissolve blood clots, promote the circulation of the blood and even help with lactation? Humans like to believe in their own uniqueness. In my view they are uniquely stupid.

Thursday

I heard one. Moving through the wood in a way that humans imagine is silent. He was planning to make himself a few yuan by selling a pangolin. It’s illegal these days, even here, but I’m not sure they put their hearts and souls into enforcing that particular law. I curled up tight in the shadows and outwaited him. It wasn’t a nice wait. Had he found me he could have just picked me up: my fine defensive techniques don’t work against picker-uppers. But I was hidden well enough. He didn’t see me and moved on.

Friday

Our population has gone down 80% in just three pangolin generations… and tonight I had a sudden conviction that the world needs more pangolins. I’m a solitary sort of creature – we all are – but I was struck with an unexpected yearning for company. Male company. Was it the time of year? Was it that faint smell on the breeze?

Saturday

Damn it, I’m setting off in the direction of that tingling odour. I’ll walk till I find him: he’s run his scent flag up the pole and I’m going to salute it. One night of bliss and I’ll be back on my own, but not for long. I can see my future spreading out before me: a family; three, maybe even four of us, revelling in the good night air, feasting on the good night ants. If the humans don’t get us first.

Chinese pangolin CV

Lifespan A dozen years or more, humans permitting

Eating habits Ants by the million

Hobbies Night-prowling

Sexual preferences An elegant fir cone

Photograph by Minden Pictures/Alamy