Pangolins
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50 free Pangolins trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Pangolins look like something a child might invent: shy, scale-covered insect-eaters that live on two continents and resemble nothing else alive. They are also among the most hunted wild animals on Earth, which is why so many people first hear of them through conservation campaigns. This quiz collects the best fun facts about pangolins: what their scales are made of, how they eat without chewing, how they defend themselves, where each species lives and what their fossil relatives were like. It also covers the illegal trade that threatens them, the laws meant to stop it, and the pangolin's appearances in films, video games, poetry and software. The questions start easy and finish with a few deep cuts, so they suit curious kids, classrooms, quiz nights and wildlife fans alike. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you will leave knowing more than when you started.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Pangolin scales are made of which substance, the same one that forms human fingernails?
Keratin
Keratin makes up every scale, and together the plates account for about a fifth of a pangolin's body weight. Reptile scales, by contrast, are built quite differently.
Q 02The word pangolin comes from pengguling, a term in the Malay language carrying which meaning?
One who rolls up
One who rolls up is the sense of pengguling, built on the Malay verb guling. The name was first given to the Sunda pangolin, which Malay speakers today call tenggiling.
Q 03Despite resembling armadillos, pangolins have which animals as their closest living relatives?
Cats, dogs and bears
Cats, dogs and bears belong to the carnivorans, which share a branch of the mammal family tree named Ferae with pangolins. The two lines are thought to have split about 75 million years ago.
Q 04Which unwanted title do conservationists give pangolins among the world's wild animals?
Most trafficked mammal
Most trafficked mammal is the label conservationists give pangolins, which by one estimate account for as much as 20% of all illegal wildlife trade.
Q 05What do pangolins swallow to help grind up insects in a muscular stomach that works like a bird's gizzard?
Small stones
Small stones collect in the stomach and mash each meal as its muscular walls churn. The stomach lining adds horny spines of its own to help with the grinding.
Q 06Which Ground-type Pokémon, number 27 in the original Pokédex, is widely thought to be modelled on a pangolin?
Sandshrew
Sandshrew borrows the pangolin's best-known defence as well as its looks. In the Alola region the same creature turns up in an Ice and Steel-type form.
Q 07Pangolins are among the few mammals that completely lack which body feature?
Teeth
Teeth are missing from a pangolin's jaws, so it swallows its prey whole. Pangolins were once placed with sloths and armadillos in an order called Edentata, meaning toothless.
Q 08Pangolins can drive off attackers by releasing a noxious chemical from glands near the tail, like which other mammal?
Skunk
Skunk-like scent glands give a pangolin a back-up defence, and the young use it too: giant pangolin infants spew a yellow secretion said to reek of decay and cabbage.
Q 09How does the ground pangolin of southern Africa usually walk, with its heavy tail held out for balance?
On its hind legs
On its hind legs is how a ground pangolin covers most distances, with its front limbs and their long digging claws held clear of the soil.
Q 10Early in 2020, researchers briefly suspected pangolins of passing the virus behind which disease from bats to humans?
COVID-19
COVID-19 was linked to pangolins after one stretch of a viral gene proved a 99% match, but comparing whole genomes showed only about 92% similarity, too little to blame them.
Q 11Which Hong Kong action star fronted the 2017 WildAid public service announcement nicknamed Kung Fu Pangolin?
Jackie Chan
Jackie Chan made the advert for the charity WildAid, one of several campaigns in China that have used celebrities to turn the public against buying pangolin products.
Q 12Which British broadcaster named the Sunda pangolin among ten species he would most like to save from extinction?
David Attenborough
David Attenborough chose it for an episode of the BBC's Natural World, recalling how he once rescued a pangolin from being eaten while filming early in his career.
Q 13Pangolin: Kulu's Journey was directed by Pippa Ehrlich, who won an Academy Award for which earlier nature documentary?
Q 21Apart from humans, the ground pangolin's main predators are leopards and which other African carnivores?
Hyenas
Hyenas and leopards head the list of its natural enemies. A cornered ground pangolin hisses, puffs and lashes out with a tail whose sharp-edged plates can cut.
Q 22Pangolins and armadillos gained similar protective plating without being close relatives, an example of which process?
Convergent evolution
Convergent evolution means the two reached the same design independently. The look-alikes were once even classified together in a single order of mammals.
Q 23Pangolins are often known by which other name, even though they are not related to the animals it mentions?
Scaly anteaters
My Octopus Teacher
My Octopus Teacher made her name; the 2025 film follows Gareth Thomas, an investment manager with no wildlife training, as he prepares a rescued baby pangolin for a return to the wild.
Q 14Which 2016 Disney film directed by Jon Favreau includes an Indian pangolin among the neighbours of a honey-loving bear?
The Jungle Book
The Jungle Book makes its pangolin one of Baloo's neighbours, alongside a pygmy hog voiced by Favreau himself and a giant squirrel voiced by fellow director Sam Raimi.
Q 15Which body part of the giant pangolin can stretch up to 70 centimetres to reach termites inside their mounds?
Tongue
Tongue length is a pangolin speciality: the organ is anchored deep inside the body rather than in the throat, and sticky saliva on it picks up the insects.
Q 16With very poor eyesight, pangolins depend mainly on which sense to track down ant nests and termite mounds?
Smell
Smell guides a foraging pangolin to its prey. Most species feed at night, when a keen nose is worth far more than sharp eyes.
Q 17Which unexpected skill do pangolins have, with one African species gulping air into its stomach to help?
Swimming
Swimming comes easily to pangolins, and the long-tailed pangolin sometimes drops from an overhanging branch straight into a stream, crossing it with a quick undulating motion.
Q 18Which term describes the tail of a tree pangolin, strong enough to grip a branch and hold its whole weight?
Prehensile
Prehensile tails let tree pangolins hang from a branch while they strip away the bark to expose the insect nests inside.
Q 19How do the scales of a newborn pangolin differ from those of an adult in its first hours of life?
Soft and pale
Soft and pale at birth, the scales harden and darken after several days. Until then the mother stays in the burrow and wraps her body around the baby when she senses danger.
Q 20The overlapping brown scales of a pangolin give it an appearance often compared to which woodland object?
A pine cone
A pine cone is the usual comparison, though the long-tailed pangolin's scales have also been likened to the leaves of an artichoke.
Scaly anteaters is the common nickname, earned by the diet and the long snout. The animals it borrows from live in the Americas and are grouped with sloths instead.
Q 24Which Swedish naturalist gave the Chinese pangolin its scientific name, Manis pentadactyla, in 1758?
Carl Linnaeus
Carl Linnaeus proposed the name, which still stands. The animal he described lives from Nepal across to southern China and has been recorded 3,000 metres up.
Q 25For which holiday in 2017 did Google release a four-day Doodle game starring a pangolin collecting objects?
Valentine's Day
Valentine's Day brought a game in four levels, one released each day from February 11, in which the pangolin gathers objects and dodges obstacles.
Q 26The ground pangolin often sleeps in burrows abandoned by warthogs or by which other African digging mammal?
Aardvarks
Aardvarks leave holes that suit a pangolin well, though it can dig its own: its burrows have rounded chambers large enough for a person to crawl inside and stand up.
Q 27The long-tailed pangolin of the African rainforest canopy differs from every other pangolin by being active when?
During the day
During the day is when the long-tailed pangolin forages, possibly to avoid competing with its close relative the tree pangolin, which feeds in the same forests after dark.
Q 28Which gift made from gilded pangolin scales did the future Edward VII receive on his 1875–76 tour of India?
A coat of armour
A coat of armour, with a matching helmet, was presented by the Maharaja of Datia. An older pangolin-scale coat, given to George III in 1820, is on show at the Royal Armouries in Leeds.
Q 29Which Linux operating system gave the code name Precise Pangolin to its long-term support release of April 2012?
Ubuntu
Ubuntu pairs an adjective with an animal sharing its first letter for every release, and version 12.04 honoured the pangolin. It was the system's fourth long-term support release.
Q 30The Philippine pangolin is found in the wild only in which island province, once joined to Borneo by a land bridge?
Palawan
Palawan is its only home, where locals call it balintong. Rising seas are thought to have cut the island off early in the Pleistocene, leaving its pangolins to become a separate species.