Chitwan is located in the Terai Arc Landscape, a region stretching over the south of Nepal and the country's boundary with India. While Nepal is known for the Himalayan mountains, the Terai is a lowland ecosystem where many of the rivers coming from the mountains form a floodplain. In fact, the elevation of Chitwan National Park is only 1,400 feet above sea level, lower than the average elevation of Kansas! In Chitwan, there are one-horned rhinoceros (Rhinoceros unicornis), sloth bear (Melursus ursinus) and the Royal Bengal tiger (Panthera tigris tigris).
Pangolins can live in a variety of habitats, from montane forests to farmland. In Chitwan, they are mainly found in thick, forested hills where they can feed in ants and termites and find the right soil to dig their burrows. These hills are very remote, which is one of the reason the area still has a healthy population of pangolins.
Pangolins are nocturnal (active only at night) and fossorial (an animal that lives primarily underground and is adapted for digging). They create burrows where they take shelter during the day, and then at night they wander throughout the forest in search of food. Pangolins are known to eat a variety of insects, but most of the time they feed on ants and termites. Pangolins' strong claws help them dig into nests, and they use their long tongues to lap up their prey. Pangolins don't have teeth – instead, the sand and rocks that get eaten with the insects helps them to grind up their food when it is in their stomach. They are also strong climbers, and will sometimes climb trees to access hard-to-reach ant nests.
