Evolving Your Armor in an Ever-Changing World: What Pangolins Teach Us About Updating Protection and Accepting Help

About this episode

This episode explores how the pangolin's ancient protection has become its vulnerability due to human actions, featuring an interview with wildlife trafficking expert Tim Santel.

Episode 67 Evolving Your Armor in an Ever-Changing World: What Pangolins Teach Us About Updating Protection and Accepting Help Guest: Tim Santel, Retired Special Agent in Charge (SAC), U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service Office of Law Enforcement; Senior Advisor & Media Relations Director, Focused Conservation What if the very thing that once protected you… is the thing that’s now keeping you stuck? And what happens when the world changes faster than your instincts can? In this episode of Resilience Gone Wild , host Jessica Morgenthal takes us into the moonlit grasslands of Botswana, following the quiet, deliberate life of the pangolin —a living fossil with nature’s most powerful mammal armor. For more than 60 million years, the pangolin’s perfect defense was simple: curl into an unbreakable ball and wait out danger. Then humans changed the rules. Today, pangolins are the most trafficked mammals on Earth. Their scales—made of keratin, the same material as human nails and hair—are sold under false claims of medicinal power, and their meat is treated as a luxury. In a single human generation, the pangolin’s ancient protection became its vulnerability. Jessica pairs this story with…

People in this episode

Host: Jessica Morgenthal

Guest: Tim Santel

Topics covered

• wildlife trafficking
• pangolins
• protection
• vulnerability
• conservation
• change

Keywords

• pangolin
• wildlife trafficking
• conservation
• protection
• vulnerability
• nature
• law enforcement

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, Focused Conservation

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