Consider the Armadillo

The nine-banded armadillo is an oddity to me. I know nothing about them other than what I've read. My encounters have been limited to a few minutes each, near dusk, in Florida, or perhaps poring over my first roadkill in amazement.

So what I'm going to give you here you could get about anywhere, but it's interesting to me. The armadillo is a collection of bizarre characteristics rolled into leathery armor. It's not just a possum in a can.

The armadillo family (Dasypodidae) finds its richest expression in South  America, where it originated. They belong to the superorder Xenarthra, along with the anteaters and sloths.  Paraguay has 11 species of armadillo. By the early Pleistocene, nine-banded armadillos had used the Isthmus of Panama to invade North America, where they range as far north as central Indiana and Nebraska, and east to Florida and South Carolina. I had no idea there were Hoosier armadillos. Nebraska? They must be more cold-tolerant than they look. My gosh. Whatever do they do in the winter, when there are no ants and termites and beetle grubs to eat? I read that they retreat underground to escape the cold, but they are unable to hibernate, and die in freezing temperatures. Soooo....what are they doing in the Great Plains? Expanding their range, and dying out each winter at its northern terminus? Scratching my head here.

Stay in Florida, little armadillo. Though I'm sure there are many who'd like to export you.

So this little animal in a can is puttering alongside the car and I'm staring at it as if it time traveled in that can because we have nothing like this in Ohio. It's an edentate, an insectivore. It gives birth to four IDENTICAL young, same sex, from a single egg that splits into four parts. So it'll have identical quadruplets, all boys or all girls. 

Because of this, and the fact that armadillos can contract leprosy, they've attracted attention of lab researchers. When you have four identical twins to work with, you can do all kinds of experiments on the animals without worrying about your results varying because of genetic differences between them. 

 The perfect lab animal. Lucky armadillos!

They look like they're walking on tiptoe all the time, on their heavy clawed toes.  They can dig very fast, and disappear almost before your eyes in nice loamy loose soil.

photo by Liam Thompson

Their armor is so beautiful. I kept wondering what an armadillo skeleton might look like--what's under all that? The armor is a combination of dermal bone and horn. Amazing. The bands remind me of those rubbery accordion-folded connectors between subway cars. The design of the animal is quite amazing. I was thrilled to find this photo of an armadillo skeleton! 

My God! I mean, just start with the ribs--widened, laterally flattened--and that crest of vertebral processes along the spine! Do you need very strong intracostal muscles to be able to breathe under all that armor? I wonder... You can see the crests on the scapula where enormous digging muscles insert. Those massive forearm and thigh bones, the bizarre tilted pelvis and the insanely cool skull, which is pretty much exactly what the armadillo's head looks like (eyes seem to be an afterthought when you dig for things you can smell). It all makes me want to pick up the next armadillo roadkill I find and somehow get that skull--heck, the whole skellington. Little peglike teeth for crunching down ants and termites. And the way the shell sits over it all. What an inspired mount.  When I look at this skeleton all I see is raw power, from the massive nature of the bones. 

Apparently a frightened nine-banded armadillo can jump straight up 3-4 feet in the air.  Which is probably an elegant escape/startle strategy when it's surprised, say, by a bear. And which, as anyone who's hit one knows, is bad when you are trying to straddle an armadillo on the highway. 

A tremendous BONK! and it's dead. Do not straddle the armadillo.

I can't leave this post without giving you a pink fairy armadillo, which looks to me like a mammalian rock shrimp. Oh my. This takes weird new places, to cute and back.

 Imagine if these had walked up the Isthmus of Panama to central Indiana. 

Liam and I felt privileged to be able to observe a live armadillo, snuffling around, looking for edibles in the grass and the golden light of a Florida evening. It's a wonderful world, when animals like this are pottering alongside the road for anyone to see.

Examining an Armadillo

It was a huge treat to find a roadkilled armadillo the same evening, to be able to put my eyes and fingers on this creature and experience even more of it.

That shell is HARD! You can knock on it and it sounds like hard polystyrene. It was more like a turtle shell than the leathery cape  I'd imagined. Of course this specimen was pretty dessicated, but still, the shell was much harder than I thought it would be.

Such elaborate armor for the tail...does the tail have a function? I wonder. It looks like it could telescope out longer, but of course it doesn't. That would be cool, though...

What a marvelous integument this animal has; how specialized is its skin!

What a wonderful world this is.

Armadillos haul lots of dry grass and plant material into their deep burrows, making a cozy nest where they give birth to their four identical quadruplets right about  now (March/April). The young, born mobile and with open eyes, stay with their mom for most of a year, and then disperse. Armadillos can live about seven years in the wild and up to ten in captivity.

I cannot resist lifting some photos from an excellent overview of armadillos on Armadillo online. Because where else are you going to see babeh armadillos? With floppy wet leather, before their shells harden up?

But oh, they harden up fast.

Imagine how fast these razor claws could slice through sand in a rapid descent into the earth, with all four feet churning at once. I've read that they can just disappear in seconds in a big fluff of sand.

Even the top of its head is armored.

Back to the living armadillo: Before long a little crowd gathered, attracted by my crouching form. We all appreciated the armadillo together. I like being in a place where people habitually stop to admire wildlife. 

photo by Phoebe Linnea Thompson

The kids and I were thoroughly amused by the long golden hair on the armadillo's soft underside.

It's an unexpected detail, the mustache on the pretty lady, and it's very cute in real life.  Liam kept saying, "He's so HAIRY!!" I don't know why we expected him to be other thanhairy. Maybe it was the yellowness of it, or the length...it was just a surprise.

Thank you, little armored one, for interrupting your long nap and showing yourself to me and the kids. I owe you one.

Hey! It's a wonderful kind of day! Oh wait. Arthur was an aardvark, wasn't he? 

Our First Armadillo

Warning: This post contains some roadkill photos. Heck, it's a post about armadillos. If it didn't mention roadkill, it wouldn't be about armadillos now, would it? Let's get that first DOA 'dillo out of the way:

There, that wasn't so bad. This poor fella managed to get himself killed in a beach parking lot. That takes some doing on both killer and killee's parts. Armadillos would be OK if they'd crouch down when a car passes over them, but instead they startle and jump straight up, bonking against the chassis and essentially commiting suicide. Armadillos are capable of leaping 4' straight up into the air, so you can imagine the forces when this power is applied to a speeding automobile.

I have always, always wanted to see an armadillo in the wild. Any armadillo (and there are 20 species worldwide, all but one of them in Latin America). In the southern US, we are blessed (or cursed, depending on who you ask) with a single armadillo species, the nine-banded Dasypus novemcinctus.

It's just so cool to have an edentate in the United States. "Edentate" means "toothless," though the nine-banded armadillo is hardly toothless. Here are the weird blade-like teeth of the hapless roadkill I found and examined in Florida. They stood up like an edge cut with pinking shears, more crenulations than teeth. Gross, I know, but look at the teeth, please.

 

Seriously: having an edentate in the US is like our having a flamingo, a spoonbill, an antelope, a lion. It's a lone representative of a cool order we might not otherwise have. D. novemcinctus ranges from Argentina to the southern United States, and it seems to have relatively recently colonized the US, having first been seen here in 1849. Armadillos naturally colonized Florida, but became extinct for unknown reasons. Modern Florida nine-banded armadillos are thought to descend from a pair that escaped from a roadside zoo about 50 years ago in Cocoa, as well as at least one earlier release. Knowing they aren't exactly "native," even if they were historically in Florida, seems to give some people license to hate them. Lots of people hate any animal that digs huge holes, so the cards are definitely stacked against the little armored one. Of all the world's species of armadillos, only the nine-banded has managed to thrive and extend its range. Go novemcinctus!

In deference to Floridians who will doubtless give me their $.02, it's easy to love an animal when it's not excavating your back yard.

But get this: The giant armadillo, Dasypus bellus, once ranged as far north as the Ohio River Valley!! No wonder I was so hot to see an armadillo, even if only its smaller cousin.

Armadillo Online is an amazing compendium of cool armadillo information. Like this: The nine-banded armadillo has a unique salivary bladder surrounded by muscle, a tappable reservoir of gluey saliva that it uses to snare ants, termites, and other insects as it eats.

Did you know that armadillos always have four young, and they are all identical, all the same sex and genetically alike? All four come from the same egg, which divides into four embryos. This makes them good lab animals, because where else are you going to get four genetically identical siblings every time? You've got your experimental animals and your control in one litter. However,  though they quickly become tame, they don't do very well in captivity.

They're also sought after and captured because armadillos can catch and carry leprosy, so a great deal of what we know about transmission of this disease comes from armadillo research. People go out with nets and catch 'dillos and sell them to labs. Unfortunately, people who handle a lot of armadillos sometimes get leprosy from them, yuccch. The armadillo has a weak immune system and an extraordinarily low body temperature -92 to 95 degrees, which is thought to make them susceptible to leprosy. Reason enough not to keep a pet armadillo!

Leprosy, a dreadful lesiony lumpy skin disease caused by the bacteria Mycobacterium leprae and M. lepromatosis, is now treatable with a multi-drug regime of rifampicin, dapsone, and clofazimine given over 12 months. However, the Third World still hosts leper colonies where people suffering from the disease are segregated--over 1,000 colonies exist in India alone. I flew over an island that's given over to people suffering from leprosy in Guyana, in South America. It's still part of the reality for many less affluent countries. That hit me hard, circling over that island just an ocean away from Florida, but decades removed in medical advancement. We are incredibly fortunate in the U.S. I try never to forget that.

Armadillos sleep up to 16 hours a day. Maybe this is why I'd never seen one until this trip to Florida. I've been all over south Texas too, but no go until now. As the kids and I headed to the beach one evening, I saw the trundling shape of my first 'dillo near a busy intersection. I whooped with joy and pulled over to document it.

photo by Phoebe Linnea Thompson

Absolutely beautiful it was, a perfect specimen.

I was impressed by its muley ears and perfect carapace; its birdlike snoot and tiny eyes. It spent 90 per cent of its time with its nose deep in the grass, looking for insects to eat, so I have dozens of photos but only a few where you can see its little eye. This is one of them.

More armadillo exploration anon.