﻿NOTES ON THE MALAY PANGOLIN, MANIS JAVANICA 

 DESMAREST ' 



By W. Schultze 



(From the Entomological Section, Biological Laboratory, Bureau of 

 Science, Manila, P. I.) 



Two plates 



During a recent trip to Palawan I had the opportunity to 

 observe a specimen of the pangolin, Manis javanica Desmarest, 

 in captivity for a period of about three weeks. The animal was 

 captured by a native boy who discovered it in the act of climbing 

 a tree. Previous to the capture of the animal, I had given some 

 attention to the collecting of specimens of termites or white ants. 

 The species that builds the roughly globose nests on the trunks 

 or branches of trees was fairly common about Taytay, and I had 

 observed that many of the nests had been destroyed or partly 

 destroyed. Generally, the disturbed nests had a round or ir- 

 regularly shaped hole in one side and all or part of the contents 

 of the interior had been removed. Some of the disturbed nests 

 still remained attached to the trunks or branches of trees, while 

 others had been broken off. I was at first inclined to attribute 

 the destruction of the nests to some species of bird, and thought 

 it possible that the bird was feeding on the termites or that it 

 utilized the hollowed nests as breeding places. 



Upon receiving the pangolin, I offered it various species of 

 large true ants, but it paid no attention to them and refused to 

 eat. I then secured a fresh brood comb from a terrestrial 

 termite nest with its included termites, and the pangolin quickly 

 consumed all the insects. To supply the animal in this way with 

 sufficient food presented considerable difficulties, and remember- 

 ing the destroyed and partly destroyed nests of the arboreal 

 termites that I had observed in the forests the idea occurred to 

 me that the pangolin was probably responsible for their destruc- 

 tion and that these particular termites, to a large degree, sup- 



1 Desmarest, Mammalogie (1822), 2, 377; Blandford, Fauna Brit. India, 

 Mammalia (1891) 599, fig. 199; Hollister, This Journal, Sec. D (1912), 

 7, 35. 



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