Pangolins are the world's most trafficked mammal, with all eight species under severe pressure from illegal hunting for scales used in traditional medicine and meat consumed as a luxury food. Their welfare in trafficking and captivity is dire.
Trafficked pangolins experience some of the most severe welfare conditions of any trafficked animal. Their defensive strategy - curling into a ball - which protects against predators, makes them trivially easy to collect and transport. Trafficked individuals are typically packaged in crowded, poorly ventilated containers, starved of their specialized diet, dehydrated, and subjected to extreme temperature fluctuations during transit. Mortality during trafficking is extremely high. Those that survive to rehabilitation face extremely poor prognoses: pangolins' specialized dietary needs, stress sensitivity, and resistance to human proximity make rehabilitation success rates dismally low. The welfare harm of trafficking is therefore compounded by the near-impossibility of recovery.