Why pangolins are so difficult to care for in captivity and what specialized facilities are doing to help.
Pangolin welfare in captivity is at the frontier of exotic animal medicine because the species is so poorly adapted to captive conditions that survival itself is the immediate welfare challenge. The welfare goal for confiscated pangolins is minimizing handling and stress, providing species-appropriate environments with appropriate substrate and foraging opportunities, and achieving wild release wherever the individual condition allows. The tragic reality is that for many confiscated pangolins, the stress of captivity itself causes welfare harm that cannot be fully mitigated. This argues strongly for preventing trafficking at source rather than treating its consequences.