Pangolins are among the most secretive mammals on Earth. Their nocturnal habits, solitary nature, and tendency to freeze or roll into a ball when threatened have made them extraordinarily difficult to study in the wild. For decades, researchers in Africa and Asia relied on anecdote, road kill records, and the occasional accidental camera-trap image. The arrival of miniaturised GPS technology changed everything, opening a window into just how far these armoured animals travel each night and how large their territories truly are.
Understanding a species' home range is not merely an academic exercise. It directly informs how large protected areas must be to sustain viable populations, how wildlife corridors should be planned, and how land-use changes such as agriculture expansion affect individual animals. For pangolins, which are the world's most heavily trafficked wild mammals, this knowledge is urgent. Populations across sub-Saharan Africa and Asia have collapsed in many areas, and effective conservation requires knowing exactly how much ground each animal needs to survive.
Home range estimates also reveal something fundamental about a species' ecology: how prey is distributed, how competition for food is managed between neighbours, and how climate and seasonality alter behaviour. In the case of ground pangolins in southern Africa, seasonal variation in termite and ant activity produces measurable shifts in nightly travel distance and range use.
Key finding: GPS studies of ground pangolins (Smutsia temminckii) in South Africa's Limpopo province recorded average home ranges of 18.5 square kilometres for adult males and 9.2 square kilometres for adult females during a two-year tracking study, with peak movement in the warm wet season when termite mounds are most active.
The ground pangolin, found across a broad band of sub-Saharan Africa from Senegal east to Tanzania and south to South Africa, has been the subject of the most detailed telemetry work conducted to date. Research teams operating within South Africa's Tswalu Kalahari Reserve, Zimbabwe's Savé Valley Conservancy, and Botswana's Tuli Block have deployed GPS-GSM collar systems, generating thousands of location fixes per animal over periods ranging from several months to over three years.
On a typical foraging night, a ground pangolin in Limpopo or the Northern Cape will move between 3 and 7 kilometres from its resting burrow. Animals tracked at Tswalu sometimes exceeded 10 kilometres on a single night, particularly when moving between widely spaced food patches during the dry season when surface invertebrates are less abundant. Females with dependent young travelling in a rolled-up position on their mother's tail base showed significantly reduced nightly distances, sometimes under 2 kilometres.
Movement patterns are not random. Individuals show strong site fidelity to particular burrow systems and repeatedly visit the same ant and termite colonies over successive nights, consistent with optimal foraging theory. Burrows are often rotated on a cycle of several days to allow prey colonies time to recover.
Not all pangolins cover the same ground. The eight extant species differ substantially in body size, habitat, and diet specialisation, all of which influence territory dimensions.
One of the more surprising findings from multi-individual tracking studies is the degree to which adjacent home ranges overlap, and how this differs between sexes. In the Savannah pangolin populations studied in Zimbabwe and South Africa, male home ranges showed very little core-area overlap with those of other adult males, suggesting competitive exclusion from preferred foraging zones. Female ranges, by contrast, sometimes overlapped substantially with other females, and male ranges routinely encompassed the ranges of several females, a pattern consistent with a mate-searching strategy.
"Pangolins are not defending territories in the way a lion or leopard might, but they are clearly using scent communication to signal occupancy. The anal gland secretion deposited on termite mounds and trees appears to function as a spatial signal to other pangolins." — Field researcher comment, Tswalu Kalahari Research Centre
In the semi-arid savannahs of the Northern Cape and Kalahari, rainfall drives everything. The summer rainy season (October to March) brings a pulse of termite activity as winged alates emerge and mound surface temperatures rise. GPS data consistently show pangolins expanding their nightly movements and using larger portions of their home ranges during this period. In the dry winter months, movement contracts and animals may spend more time excavating deep into termite mounds rather than foraging at the surface.
Temperature also plays a direct role. Ground pangolins have poor thermoregulatory capacity for mammals of their size, and extremely cold winter nights in the highveld can see animals remaining underground in burrows for extended periods. Tracking data from the Mokopane area recorded ground pangolins spending up to 72 hours continuously in the same burrow during cold snaps in June and July, the heart of the southern African winter.
The practical implications of pangolin home range data are significant for conservationists designing protected areas in southern Africa. If an adult male ground pangolin requires up to 35 square kilometres of suitable habitat, a small reserve of 10 square kilometres cannot sustain a breeding population. Pangolin conservancies in South Africa, Botswana, and Zimbabwe have increasingly used GPS data to argue for the maintenance and restoration of wildlife corridors between fragmented habitats.
The Pangolin Conservation Support Trust and Save Pangolins, both operating across southern and East Africa, have used tracking data to identify priority corridors between major reserves, seeking to ensure that genetic exchange between subpopulations remains possible as human land use expands. In areas where roads, fences, and agricultural fields fragment the landscape, GPS data allow researchers to pinpoint exact crossing points and advocate for underpasses or fence modifications.
GPS tracking data also have a direct role in protection. By understanding where pangolins spend their days in burrows, anti-poaching teams can prioritise patrols in high-risk areas. In regions where snare poaching is prevalent, knowing that a tagged individual is stationary in the same burrow for an unusually long time can trigger a welfare check. Several research programmes in South Africa and Zimbabwe now integrate real-time GPS alerts into their ranger deployment systems.
Despite significant progress, large gaps remain. Giant pangolin movement ecology in West and Central Africa is still poorly understood due to the extreme remoteness of rainforest habitats and the logistical challenges of recovering and replacing transmitter units. The Chinese pangolin and Sunda pangolin in Southeast Asia face even more severe research deficits, compounded by decimated wild populations and political constraints on fieldwork in some range states.
Long-term studies tracking the same individuals across multiple years are rare, meaning that questions about seasonal range shifts, lifetime territory fidelity, and the effect of ageing on movement are still largely open. Ongoing projects at several South African conservancies aim to address these gaps by maintaining year-round monitoring of individually identified animals across their entire adult lives.
Conservation note: South Africa's ground pangolin population has benefited substantially from GPS-informed anti-poaching strategies. Reserves in Limpopo and the North West province that integrated tracking data into ranger deployment reported measurable reductions in poaching incidents between 2018 and 2024.
Home range size varies by species. Ground pangolins in southern Africa range from 5 to over 30 square kilometres, with males holding larger areas than females. Forest species in central Africa occupy smaller, denser territories due to higher prey availability year-round.
GPS data from South Africa and Zimbabwe show ground pangolins covering 2 to 10 kilometres per night. Prey density, season, and whether a female is nursing young all influence nightly distance.
Pangolins do not actively defend territories through overt aggression. Instead, adult males use scent marking with anal gland secretions and urine to signal occupancy. Male home ranges overlap minimally with rival males, indicating resource partitioning rather than direct conflict.
Researchers use GPS-GSM collar tags and VHF radio transmitters fitted around the tail base or on a belly harness. Satellite-linked units log fixes every 30 minutes to several hours. Camera traps and footprint surveys supplement electronic data in remote areas of sub-Saharan Africa.