Armadillo is a fun word to say. It means “little armored one” in Spanish. They are also very fun animals to see. Armadillos are small mammals with a shell of armor. It’s more like leather than real armor so they are still able to move around. They have sharp claws, short legs, and a pointy snout. They live in the ground in spaces they dig themselves called burrows.
Photo taken at Camp El Tesoro by Heather Pitts
The armadillos we have in this part of the country are called Nine-Banded Armadillos, and they’re also the Texas State Small Mammal (the Texas State Large Mammal is the Longhorn).
Armadillos have poor vision, so they rely on their other senses to protect them and help them find food. Armadillos use their sharp claws to dig in the ground for food – mainly invertebrates like grubs, insects, termites, worms, ants, and beetles. We see evidence of this at Camp El Tesoro near the creek, on trails, and anywhere else that has moist soil. You can tell that an armadillo has been there because there will be lots of small holes in the ground.
Armadillo Holes. Photo by Wildlife Control.
The armadillo has a few different defense mechanisms. When startled, they will jump in the air then flee to safety. This is helpful when scrounging around the forest and can jump and escape into some thorny bushes, but not so helpful when they’re startled by a moving vehicle. Guess what happens when they jump then…
Another way they defend themselves is to get into water. If they move quickly enough and can find a creek or pond to get into, they have the ability to remain underwater for up to six minutes. When they can finally come out into the open, they have to bring air into its stomach and intestines so that the armadillo will become buoyant and float to the top of the water.
Nine-Banded Armadillo. Photo by Jerry Segraves.
Humans have to be careful around living or dead armadillos. Armadillos are known to carry leprosy – a bacterial infection that armadillos are susceptible to due to their fairly low body temperature. Humans can get it by handling living or dead armadillos or by consuming armadillo meat.
What I Found The Most Interesting About Armadillos: Delayed Implantation and Polyembryony. The first term means that armadillos can get pregnant during breeding season (summer months), but the babies don’t start to develop until the fertilized egg attaches, generally in November. Polyembryony is a phenomenon that is normally present in armadillos: most litters are four identical quadruplets.
Photo taken outside NASA. Photo by NASA/Ken Thornsley.
Here are some links if you’d like to read more about armadillos:
https://www.msu.edu/~nixonjos/armadillo/index.html
http://www.nsrl.ttu.edu/tmot1/dasynove.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armadillo
http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/mammals/armadillo/
http://www.wildlife.pro/digging-lawn.html
Questions about this post:
- Since armadillos do not have a strong sense of sight, which sense do you think is the strongest?
- What does it mean to have a defense mechanism? Do all mammals have one?
- What should you do if you see an armadillo? What time of day are you most likely to spot them?
