RAISING A BABY PANGOLIN BY HAND
All of the pangolins we care for have been rescued from the clutches of wildlife traffickers. They’ve suffered so much – when they arrive at our door they’re often exhausted, dehydrated and carrying life-threatening injuries. This was the case when a tiny baby pangolin came to us with her mother. Sadly, stress had caused the mother’s […]
All of the pangolins we care for have been rescued from the clutches of wildlife traffickers. They’ve suffered so much – when they arrive at our door they’re often exhausted, dehydrated and carrying life-threatening injuries.
This was the case when a tiny baby pangolin came to us with her mother. Sadly, stress had caused the mother’s milk to dry up and our team had to make the tough decision to separate the baby from her mother to try and save her. We’re hoping to release the mother soon, while the baby remains in our care.
Affectionately called ‘Pangopup’ by our team, she was only a few weeks old and weighed just 400 grams. Pangopup needed milk every four hours for a few months, until she slowly learned to dig and find ants to eat. For a while, we continued to supplement her ant diet with milk – but she’s now growing up fast and capable of foraging for all the ants she needs!
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This is the first baby pangolin to be hand-raised in Malawi
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Pangopup recently gave us a big scare when she got very sick with a tickborne infection. Our team was able to treat her and thankfully she pulled through to make a full recovery. She now weighs more than 10 times what she did when she came to us!
Pangolins don’t usually do so well under human care – as far as we know, this is the first infant pangolin to be hand-raised in Malawi. We desperately need your support to continue providing this round-the-clock care to pangolins in need.
Pangopup remains under our team’s watchful eye but is learning every day to become more and more independent. We hope we’ll be able to release her into a life in the wild in the future.
Our team works tirelessly to rehabilitate and release pangolins back into the wild, where they belong. Last year we successfully released 17 pangolins.
If you would like to support the ongoing rehabilitation of pangolins in our care, click the donate button below.
