The gentle, solitary pangolin has a tongue as long as its body and curls into a ball when threatened. It is also the world's most trafficked mammal, and threatened with extinction. In front of a drab government building near Vietnam's northern border with China, a young conservationist named Nguyen Van Thai prises open a flimsy wooden crate with a machete. He lifts out four plastic sacks and place
![The world's most-trafficked mammal - and the scaliest](https://cdn-ak-scissors.b.st-hatena.com/image/square/305eec911c51c2ad38219397e3ae5488f0d2614c/height=288;version=1;width=512/https%3A%2F%2Fichef.bbci.co.uk%2Fnews%2F1024%2Fmedia%2Fimages%2F80798000%2Fjpg%2F_80798171_pangolin_andchild_ap624b.jpg)