Pangolins are the world's most trafficked wild mammals. Their rescue and rehabilitation from the illegal wildlife trade reveals significant welfare impacts of trafficking.
Pangolins suffer acutely from the moment of capture. Their instinctive defense of rolling into a ball makes them easy to collect but leaves them completely vulnerable to extended captivity stress. Transit conditions involve extreme confinement, no food, no water, and extreme temperatures that cause dehydration, starvation, and immune collapse. Survivors of trafficking who reach rescue facilities rarely eat voluntarily — their specialized diet of specific ant and termite species is nearly impossible to replicate in captivity. Even rescued pangolins face agonizing deaths from stress-related illness. Prevention of trafficking through demand reduction and enforcement is the only realistic welfare intervention.