Are pangolins more closely related to us than we think? They are a very unusual and unknown creature, but they could possibly be a link between the coronavirus passing from bats to humans. Does this signify that we share more in common with these scaly anteater mammals than it seems? After reading through a research article on Indian pangolins, I found some observed Pangolin behaviors that are both similar to and different from humans.

Some Differences:

• Sleeping- Pangolins are motionless with no limb or head movements, usually in a coiled up position. Maybe some humans sleep like that, but I for one do not.
• Digging- Pangolins love to dig burrows with their claws and spend a lot of time inside them. What human does that?

• Eating- They don’t have the same diet or way of eating as us. Their diet consists of delicious termites and ants, where their homes are broken down and “the termites are rapidly licked off by its glutinous tongue and swallowed.” Tasty.

Similarities:

• Courtship and Reproduction- Under captivity for study, the Pangolins were given the chance to interact with the opposite sex, and their behavior seemed really weird in comparison to human behavior, similar in some ways. In courtship, “Male pangolins were also observed repetitively following the gait of a female pangolin housed in the adjacent enclosure.” In actual sex, a long period of sniffing occurs, then chasing, then the male mounts the female to find an ideal position, and then they copulate like humans (sorry for the descriptiveness, just want to give the full picture).
• Viruses- A recent genome comparison found that both pangolin and human viruses share 90.3% of the DNA. Could this be how pangolins fit into the pandemic?

• They are mammals too

Overall it still seems like they’re more different than us humans than similar, but it’s still interesting to compare us to them. We need to bring more awareness to this creature which is unknown to many, but also believed the most trafficked mammal in the world.