Published: June 18, 2025
Among the many biological peculiarities of pangolins, their relationship with temperature stands out as particularly consequential for conservation. Pangolins are mammals — they produce internal body heat — but they do so with far less efficiency and consistency than most other members of the class. This characteristic, described technically as poor endothermy, shapes everything from their geographic range to the challenges faced by rehabilitation centres attempting to keep rescued animals alive through South African winters.
Most mammals maintain core body temperature within a degree or two of a fixed set-point regardless of the environment around them. Humans remain close to 37 degrees Celsius whether they are in the Sahara or the Scottish Highlands, thanks to powerful thermoregulatory mechanisms including shivering, sweating, and blood flow redistribution. Pangolins cannot do this with the same precision.
Measured core body temperatures in Temminck's ground pangolin (Smutsia temminckii) — the species found in South Africa, Zimbabwe, and across the southern African savanna belt — have been recorded varying by 4 to 7 degrees Celsius over a 24-hour period in response to ambient temperature fluctuations. On a cold winter night in the Limpopo, when air temperatures drop to near 5 degrees Celsius, a pangolin's body temperature may fall correspondingly to levels that would constitute hypothermia in a human or a dog.
This is not pathological. It is the species' normal physiological operating mode. Pangolins have a lower basal metabolic rate than would be predicted for their body mass, meaning they produce less heat per kilogram of body tissue than most similarly sized mammals. The evolutionary pressures that drove this trait are not fully understood, but the insectivore niche — a diet of ants and termites with a low caloric density relative to body size — may have placed a premium on energy conservation rather than thermal stability.
In captivity, pangolins exposed to temperatures below approximately 20 degrees Celsius display behaviours consistent with entry into a torpor-like state. Activity ceases, the animal adopts a tightly curled posture that minimises surface area, heart rate drops, and arousal responses to stimuli are reduced. These states can last for several hours and are readily reversed by warming the environment, but they indicate that the animal is trading activity for heat conservation.
Wild Temminck's ground pangolins in South Africa show clear seasonal activity patterns that mirror these laboratory observations. Telemetry studies tracking GPS-collared individuals in the Lowveld and at Tswalu Kalahari Reserve have recorded a marked reduction in surface foraging time during the winter months of May through August. Animals emerge later after sunset, return to their burrows earlier, and cover shorter nightly distances. On the coldest nights, some individuals do not emerge at all.
This seasonal withdrawal has important implications. A pangolin that reduces foraging activity during winter must either draw down body fat reserves or emerge for shorter but more intensive feeding bouts. Research at Tswalu has found that pangolins in the south of the species' range — where winters are colder — maintain larger fat reserves entering winter than animals at lower latitudes, suggesting they are buffering against anticipated periods of reduced foraging efficiency.
The thermal constraints on pangolins help explain the southern and upper-elevation limits of their natural range. Temminck's ground pangolin is absent from the South African Highveld, the Karoo, and the mountain zones of Lesotho and the Drakensberg escarpment — environments where winter temperatures regularly fall below the thermal minimum the species can tolerate for extended periods without incurring unsustainable energetic costs.
This is not simply about absolute cold tolerance in a single event. A pangolin can survive a cold night by curling up in a well-insulated burrow. What it cannot sustain is weeks of cold that prevent it from accumulating enough caloric intake to maintain body condition. The interaction between thermal biology and foraging energetics creates an effective distributional boundary that tracks mean winter temperature more closely than any single climatic variable.
Conservation translocations — moving pangolins from areas of high poaching pressure to safer release sites — have occasionally resulted in cold-stress mortality when animals were released into areas with cooler winters than their origin habitat. A pangolin translocated from the warm Lowveld to a reserve in the Eastern Cape or the northern Free State faces thermal conditions it may not be physiologically prepared for, particularly if the translocation occurs in autumn before it has had time to build fat reserves.
Best-practice translocation guidelines from the African Pangolin Working Group now include thermal suitability assessment as a standard component of release site selection. Animals should not be moved to environments where winter minimum temperatures routinely fall below the thermal envelope of the source population.
Climate projections for southern Africa suggest a complex picture for pangolin thermal biology. Mean temperatures across the subcontinent are forecast to increase by 1.5 to 3 degrees Celsius by 2060 under mid-range emissions scenarios, with the interior showing greater warming than the coastal zones. For a species limited at the cool end of its range by winter cold, this might appear beneficial — expanding the thermally suitable area southward and to higher elevations.
The picture is more complicated, however. Summer heat extremes are also increasing, and pangolins may face upper thermal stress thresholds during the hottest months in the arid zones they currently occupy. Heat events exceeding 40 degrees Celsius for multiple consecutive days have been associated with reduced foraging success and increased burrow refuge time in the Kalahari, potentially affecting body condition during the season when fat reserves should be accumulating ahead of winter.
Additionally, climate-driven vegetation change may alter the distribution and abundance of the termite and ant colonies that pangolins depend on for food, creating secondary effects on energy balance that interact with the direct thermal physiology. A warmer but drier Limpopo savanna may support a different termite community than today's, with consequences for prey availability that researchers have not yet fully modelled.
Pangolin rehabilitation in South Africa is conducted at a small number of specialist facilities, including those operated in association with the African Pangolin Working Group and wildlife veterinary practices in the Limpopo and Mpumalanga provinces. The thermal biology of the species creates consistent and challenging requirements for these facilities.
Maintaining ambient temperatures of 26 to 30 degrees Celsius is considered essential for animals in active rehabilitation. This temperature range supports normal metabolic function, appetite, and foraging motivation, all of which must be sustained for a pangolin to successfully self-feed and gain weight before release. Facilities that cannot maintain these temperatures through winter must use supplemental heating — infrared panels, heated substrate, or climatised enclosures — adding significantly to the operational cost of rescue and rehabilitation.
Cold-stressed pangolins present a distinctive clinical picture: reduced responsiveness, cessation of feeding, and a tendency to remain curled even when handled. Recovery requires gradual rewarming rather than rapid temperature normalisation, as shock from abrupt thermal change carries its own risks. Veterinarians working with the species have noted that animals entering rehabilitation already in poor body condition from malnutrition are at substantially higher risk of cold-stress mortality during winter months than well-conditioned individuals.
In well-run rehabilitation facilities, continuous temperature logging in pangolin enclosures is treated as a basic welfare monitoring tool alongside weight tracking and feeding records. Night-time temperature drops that push enclosure conditions below 22 degrees Celsius are flagged for corrective action. This level of attention reflects hard-won experience from early rehabilitation programmes in South Africa where winter mortality was a significant challenge before temperature management protocols were standardised.
Pangolins are mammals and therefore technically warm-blooded (endothermic), but they are considered poorly endothermic. Their core body temperature can vary by 4 to 7 degrees Celsius in response to ambient conditions — a range far wider than most mammals. This means they sit partway between strict homeotherms like humans and true ectotherms like reptiles.
During the cold, dry South African winter months of May through August, Temminck's ground pangolin reduces surface activity, spends more time underground, and may enter torpor-like states with depressed metabolic rates. Cold nights raise thermoregulatory costs that the animal cannot easily meet, so limiting activity and conserving heat underground is the adaptive response.
Captive care guidelines developed from rehabilitation experience in South Africa recommend ambient temperatures of 26 to 30 degrees Celsius for Temminck's ground pangolin. Temperatures below 20 degrees Celsius for extended periods carry a significant risk of cold-stress, immunosuppression, and mortality, particularly in animals that are already compromised by injury or malnutrition.
Climate change is projected to shift the thermal envelope of suitable pangolin habitat southward and to higher elevations across Africa. Areas at the cool margins of current range may become more thermally suitable, while the hottest and driest zones may see heat stress events that exceed the species' upper tolerance. The net effect on population distribution will depend on whether habitat connectivity allows range shifts to occur.
Torpor in pangolins refers to a reversible state of reduced metabolic rate and lowered body temperature observed in captive animals and inferred in wild animals during cold winter nights. It is shorter in duration than hibernation (hours to a day rather than weeks or months) and the animal can be roused more rapidly. True multi-week hibernation has not been documented in pangolins.