The international body that governs wildlife trade voted this week to ban the sale of pangolins , an aardvark-like animal that iscurrently the most heavily trafficked mammal in the world. Pangolins are found across Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, and are sought after for their meat and scales , the latter of which are believed by some in East Asia to have medicinal purposes. Pangolins are shy, cat-sized mammals that eat ants and termites, and when threatened they curl into a ball rather than defending themselves. Nearly one million pangolins have been trafficked in the past decade, according to National Geographic . The International Union for the Conservation of Nature has listed all eight species of pangolin as endangered or threatened with extinction.