Rare footage has captured the slow nighttime courtship ritual of pangolins — which ultimately led to the birth of a "pangopup" filmed clinging to its mother's back.
For the new PBS series "Big Little Journeys," videographers followed a pair of Taiwanese pangolins (Manis pentadactyla pentadactyla) in a forest in Taiwan. In the clip, the female leads the male for hours through the night until she is ready to start mating. The pair are then seen entwined as they attempt to find a position that works around their armor — overlapping scales that are so tough predators struggle to bite into it.
