There are many animals that exist in the wild that not many people have seen. It might be because they’re on the verge of being extinct, or they really know how to hide well. It might also be because they live in hard to travel to places.
Today we will explore the unexplored and bring home to you animals you don’t see every day as we count down 15 wild animals that have rarely been seen.
Pangolin The Pangolin, a solitary anteater resembling an artichoke is the world’s most trafficked mammal.
Prized for its scales, particularly for traditional medicine in China, this quiet animal is at the center of a sophisticated, multimillion-dollar supply chain across Africa and Asia, run by networks of criminal syndicates.
Roughly 50 tons of illegal African pangolin scales have been seized globally in the last four months. In shipments that contain both pangolins and ivory, pangolin scales have now surpassed the volume of ivory.
Most demand is believed to be from China, where pangolins are consumed, and its scales used in traditional Chinese medicine.
Various research articles suggest that this increase is a genuine increase in the number of pangolins being poached.
The overwhelming majority of smuggling is likely to continue undetected. Only a tenth of trafficked wildlife is intercepted, according to one Interpol estimate.