VERY intresting article ! : Captive breeding of pangolins: current status, problems and future prospects
Not all that well researched, however, when one considers that although it mentions the single pangolin held at San Diego in the list of captive collections which have held taxa within the last 10 years, no mention whatsoever is made of the pair at Leipzig. In fact, Leipzig is entirely unmentioned in the article full stop.
I wouldn't say that the article overall wasn't well-researched, but certainly they don't appear to have put a lot of effort into finding the zoos which have kept them. Leipzig is of course an obvious (and one would have thought, well-known) example. But they also don't mention the Indian zoos which could have been easily noted from the CZA's inventory website. I saw them recently at Lok Kawi in Borneo as well.
This probably is a REALLY REALLY REALLY stupid question but why are pangolins so rare in captivity? Is it because they are the most trafficked animal?
I've heard they're a bit tricky to keep in captivity, I don't remember why, it might have something to do with diet, though it certainly is possible. I'm not sure if they breed well in captivity either.
I am surprised that among the authors there is nobody from the pangolin group of South China Normal University, which works in the same city and is more successful in pangolin keeping and breeding.
are you really asking this question on a thread which opens with a link to a paper about the issues of maintaining pangolins in captivity?
Another article about Pangolin-breeding : A note on captive breeding and reproductive parameters of the Chinese pangolin, Manis pentadactyla Linnaeus, 1758
