Black Bellied Pangolin: The REAL Tree Pangolin

The even rarer pangolin of Central African Republic is the most beautiful species of pangolin in the world - The Black-bellied pangolin, also known as the Long-tailed Pangolin. It was discovered by Tamar and Rod Cassidy of Sangha Lodge, through much research and continuous tracking of this individuals and other rehabilitated wild individuals, that Black-bellied pangolins are in fact diurnal! This was not known until literally less than a year ago! But black-bellied pangolins forage mostly in the canopy or close to it, and spend about 95% of their lives on the trees, rarely coming to the ground. To differentiate from their closely-related cousins, the “white-bellied pangolin“ which is wrongly named “tree pangolin“ despite the fact that it only spends about 50% of its time in the trees. So black-bellied pangolins are diurnal (active during the day) and almost strictly arboreal (living in trees), and they eat only ants, whereas the white-bellied ones also eat termites. This beautiful individual was rescued by Rod and Tamar, and slowly returned to the wild, until it is now completely wild and has no human interaction for over a year and a half. But it is tracked by 2 local tribesmen to make sure no other tribesmen catch it and it ends up on somebody’s plate. What a beautiful and strange animal!