The Revenge of the Pangolins - 11th episode, a useful tail!

I love every kind of anteating animals. Namely pangolins, also known as scaly anteaters.
These curious creatures, before only known for being the most trafficked animals of the world, for being a delicacy in some Asiatic places or because of the ridiculous false medicinal virtues of their scales, are now more famous for having, eventually, transmited the Corona virus to humans. Thus, some media announced it as the revenge of the pangolin.
However, recent studies show that the Corona virus mutation found in pangolins is adapted to humans while the mutation found in humans is not adapted to pangolins.
In simple language, of course, it may mean that probably, humans transmited it to pangolins and not the other way round.
When we think about it all, we hop humans will stop hunting and eating pangolins and that it will be good to these wonderful creatures close to estinction.
Though, when humans think in an animal as the responsible for a disease, it is always a excuse used by humans to exterminate that creature.
If they are the vector, and it seems they're not, I don't know if humans will forgive pangolins for being poached, traficked  and eaten or if these humans will see pangolins as the guilty. The only thing I know is that pangolins will never blame the humans.

As no new additions are expected during this pandemy, I will show gradually my pangolin figures and talk a little about them.

I will start with something I never presented before.
These two pangolins with a trunk as base, were a gift from a very special friend of this forum.
It is actually a copy of a relatively expensive resin model, made in 2018 by Edage but, we figured it out only some time after the purchase.
Pangolins can be posed in very many ways and on picture I am showing, they are incorrectly posed to help you seeing them better. Both use the same mould being the colour the only difference.
Species represented is Chinese pangolin Manis pentadactyla. Supposing they are stretched, they measure about 22 cm long. what put these figures around 1/5 scale.

Very beautiful Roger!

A fantastic photo

Those two friends are just so cute, and very high quality sculpts

very beautiful and big!!

Thank you for these interesting explanations..

Everything you wrote a about Pangolins is very well said Roger !
I am glad to see the two fellows here :)
They really look very nice and atractive, when going all around on the trunk .
It will be a fun...Maybe you can try to show them in different positions ... if you like that :)

Thank you for sharing your pangolin collection.
I know it is one of your favorite animals

Well, I agree with you and it remains to be hoped this is one of the stories that we humans will draw the necessary consequences and use Corona to be more respectful for nature in the future.
This is really a very unusual and beautiful model.

Wow, Yvette is still a wake too

costicuba wrote:

Wow, Yvette is still a wake too

Too much coffee today.

75senta75 wrote:

costicuba wrote:

Wow, Yvette is still a wake too

Too much coffee today.

Thank you Roger for sharing both your pangolin and also your very interesting words on the topic.

This reminds me back to a story I read online (so do not quote this as fact-in case it is not) about white sharks and human interference in california....apparently white sharks fed on seals on the coast of south california. After the film 'Jaws' was released, people got scared and fished to destroy these sharks. This enabled the seal population to spread to the North Coast. Then the sharks became protected by law. So when the shark population rebuilt, they were hunting seals on both the north and south coast of california!! I may have mixed up north and south but this was the story. Nature is beautiful in the way that it finds the perfect balance. Humans have a history of ruining this, whether good intentions or bad....but we are getting better, slowly, in general.

This is an animal I know nothing about yet. But they look very specialised and so should be interesting to learn about.

One year before the Edage, in 2017, Yowie USA had released also a Chinese pangolin, to the Rescue series.
This species is one of 8 pangolin species, and it is listed as critically endangered. This particular animal is a delicacy in Vietnam.
The design is clearly adjusted for a figure that is supposed to be sold inside of a chocoegg, the way tail is curved allowed it to be made in a more generous size.

Thanks everyone for watching and for your interesting comments!

Caracal wrote:

very beautiful and big!!

Thank you for these  interesting  explanations..

costicuba wrote:

Everything you wrote a about Pangolins is very well said Roger !
I am glad to see the two fellows here :)
They really look very nice and atractive, when going all around on the trunk .
It will be a fun...Maybe you can try to show them in different positions ... if you like that :)

Thank you for sharing your pangolin collection.
I know it is one of your favorite animals

I will try to take some more pictures later and Kosta, some of my pangolins told me how much you are aware of my love for these wonderful creatures.
[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.], big but not that much. Here with the CollectA Indian crested porcupine.

Steve170 wrote:

Thank you Roger for sharing both your pangolin and also your very interesting words on the topic.

This reminds me back to a story I read online (so do not quote this as fact-in case it is not) about white sharks and human interference in california....apparently white sharks fed on seals on the coast of south california. After the film 'Jaws' was released, people got scared and fished to destroy these sharks. This enabled the seal population to spread to the North Coast. Then the sharks became protected by law. So when the shark population rebuilt, they were hunting seals on both the north and south coast of california!! I may have mixed up north and south but this was the story. Nature is beautiful in the way that it finds the perfect balance. Humans have a history of ruining this, whether good intentions or bad....but we are getting better, slowly, in general.

This is an animal I know nothing about yet. But they look very specialised and so should be interesting to learn about.

Nature is wonderful and humans don't have anything to teach to Nature. I think one of the reasons why I don't like too much cinema, it is because of movies like Jaws. But one doesn't make the rule.
I also hope, without being boring, to share some facts about pangolins.

Very nice comperation photo Roger
And the Yowie one look`s very cute , and well painted for such a small model :)

costicuba wrote:

Very nice comperation photo Roger
And the Yowie one look`s very cute , and well painted for such a small model :)

Thanks Kosta, you are right. Yowies USA series are serious models and I hope they keep improving. :)

Another Chinese pangolin in my collection is this beautiful figure released at the end of 2016, and it belongs to a series called Naturally Adorkable 2, made in cooperation with a Chinese magazine titled Natural History.
It is a figure to be displayed hanging from something as the "false Edage", and it is made of hard pvc. These figures are beautifully packaged in small boxes with some information.


In this picture both figures share the trunk but it is hard to see their difference in size.


This picture shows reasonably how smaller is the Naturally Adorkable figure.
It looks a juvenile when compared with the "false Edage".

Pangolin's overlaping scales, are their best protection agains predators.
Ironically, as it was mentioned, pangolins are in risk of extinction because of the use of their scales to traditional Chinese medicine.

When in danger, it rolls completely into a ball protecting their soft parts, namely their snout and ventral area and exposing the sharp scales.
Babies, curiously, are born with soft scales and these take a pair of days to harden. During this stage, they ride on their mother's backs. Mother protects them using her tail to hide them between the tail and body when curled in defensive posture.

As a collector, I have a little hope that one of the companies will release a pangolin with a baby on her back, I hope Papo does it once there's no pangolin in their range and they made something similar with their sloth. Besides it, Papo is very good working with scales.


Note: Post edited with release year and corrected the material.

wonderful pictures and pieces and thanks a lot for comments!

..but "False Edage"..?

Do you think the material is Polyresin?

Beautiful pangolins, I love them!

Those pictures are just so heart-warming, I almost get tears in my eyes

How can anybody EAT a pangolin

Thanks everyone, tomorrow the pangotale continues.

Caracal wrote:

wonderful pictures and pieces and thanks a lot for comments!

..but "False Edage"..?

Yes, that's a unfortunate mode to refer to these beautiful figures and made of a high quality material. I don't know how to call them. Adage? cordage, pendage...? Delage!

widukind wrote:

Do you think the material is Polyresin?

Andreas, if it is not polyresin, it is rpvc once it is very hard, little or no plasticizers were applied.
You can use tetrahydrofuran to check, if it dissolves, it is pvc.
Seriously, the only seller I see at this moment on Ebay, tells it is pvc but I don't know it is trusteable.
As you are a practical man, my best answer is:
- It is good for your collection.

SUSANNE wrote:

Those pictures are just so heart-warming, I almost get tears in my eyes

How can anybody EAT a pangolin

Thanks for your comment, you inspired me to one of the next episodes.

And the 3-th pangolin is great
And this trunk works very well
I wonder ... how many pangolins can be on it together ...

2017 witnessed a surprise! Schleich, the best known brand of animal toys, released a pangolin!
Even more surprisingly, one of the African species and if it was not enough, it is a figure sculpted with high quality and the result is a very realistic and detailed model.
Giant pangolins '''Smutsia gigantea''' is the largest of all eight pangolin species. Males can measure up to 140 cm what puts this figure between 1:12 and 1:15 scale.
Being a giant and weighing more than 30 kg, is an advantage over all other pango species once this is the only species being observed using their body weight over its tail to destroy termite mounds.
It is also very interesting their use of a bipedal posture walking using exclusively the rear legs and using its tail for a better balance. Take as example, the Safari's Incredible Creatures pangolin that is still missing in my collection.



Pangolins live in burrows, often digging their own with their long claws but sometimes they also reuse burrows from other animals.
Our pango friend is happy once he found a burrow with enough toilet paper for the next days.

Very interesting description Roger