Chinese Pangolin at Leipzig, 03/09/11

Manis pentadactyla pentadactyla

These photos are taken at the early-afternoon feeding session, when the lights are turned up for a time and both animals were active. Absolutely wonderful creatures.

This is a really cool little guy. Given the high mortality rate for these guys in western zoos at least, do you know how he (she?) is doing?

I think we worked out this was the female in the end.

The male has been at Leipzig since 2007 and the female arrived 2009. I'm not aware of any problems with either; certainly they both seemed in good health in September.

Thanks for the information. It is heartening to know that they have been alive for a few years now. Hopefully little pangolins will show up at some point if the male and female like each other.

Is it true that they're feeding them on bee larvae?

The food we saw them given was a porridge-like gloop - couldn't say what was in it!

The female "Quesan" refused to be mated by the male "Toufeng" last year.

"Toufeng" had a severe cold in 2009, but he survived and is in good health now.

The food (indeed a porridge-like sludge, comparably with anteater mash) consists of many many bee larvae (keepers winter activity to shell them), apples, chitin powder and some further ingredients - all together reduced to small pieces and boiled in a rice cooker.

this photo looks like a still from that little-known movie "Pangolin Zombies II: kill pangolin kill"

"Night of the Living Pangolin" ?

How often will they adopt this bipedal posture, using their tails as braces?

the giant and ground pangolins of Africa run on their hind legs, holding their front claws free of the ground. It looks pretty funny (you could probably find some clips on youtube).