They are found in the tropical regions of Africa and Asia. Pangolins are conspicuous and remarkable because their backs are covered with large, overlapping scales made up of agglutinated hairs. But they are strange in other ways as well. Their tongue is extraordinarily long and muscular, arising from the pelvis and the last pair of ribs deep in the animal's chest. As a result, the tongue and associated muscles are longer than the animal's head and body, allowing the tongue to be extruded to an astonishing degree.
Pangolins lack teeth.
Instead, the the pyloric part of their stomach is thickened and muscular, with odd keratinous spines projecting into its interior. Pangolins have the ability to close their ears and nostrils as well as eyes, presumably to keep ants out. The skull of pangolins is smoothly conical, lacking the ridges and crests found on most mammalian crania. The palate is long, but not as long as the palate of myrmecophagids , and unlike members of that group it does not incorporate the pterygoids . They have no jugal and the zygomatic arch is incomplete.