Pangolins are the world's most trafficked wild mammals; the suffering involved in their capture, transport, and slaughter for traditional medicine is extreme and well-documented.
Pangolin trafficking causes extreme welfare harms at every stage. Capture involves prolonged pursuit and handling that causes severe stress — pangolins cannot fight back and their defensive curl makes them easy to bag. Transport conditions are appalling: animals are tightly packed, without food, water, or appropriate temperature for journeys lasting days to weeks. Many die during transport. Those that survive arrive emaciated, injured, and severely stressed. Slaughter methods are brutal. Rescue centre survival is very low because pangolins are so specialised in their diet (specific ant and termite species) and so stress-sensitive that captivity itself is nearly fatal. Prevention — at the demand side, through TCM substitution, and at the supply side, through law enforcement — is the only meaningful welfare intervention.