Pangolin

The pangolin is the world’s only scaled mammal. Known as the “scaly anteaters”, they use super-long tongues to eat 70 million insects a year, helping to protect our forests.

Sadly, their unique defense mechanism—rolling into a tight ball—makes them easy targets for poachers. They are the most heavily trafficked wild mammals on Earth, with all eight species now threatened with extinction, and desperately in need of our protection.

This Pangolin portrait was created using a technique similar to scratchboard, where the black area is scraped away with sharp tools to reveal the white of the paper beneath.