ARMADILLO

ARMADILLO

The nine banded armadillo would make you think it is left over from pre-historic times. However, it is a modern species with great adaptability.  It is so successful that in some places it is becoming a pest.

Armadillos are unique amongst mammals in having perfect defence armour. As a result it would rather class as part of the family of tortoise than mammals. It also has an almost primitive and clumsy manner. In spite of all that the armadillo is one of the very few species which have great adaptabilities and it even extended its        range.

Armadillos only live in the American and their areas reaching form Kansa, Missouri south, through Texas, Mexico, Panama, Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay.

BIRTH

When they are born it has a leathery, pliable skin. After a few weeks the skin starts to harden into a series of bony plates sheathed in horn. As the Armadillo gets older it grows its nine-banded plates to cover the whole body. The plates move in concertina-like arrangements. Sometimes the animals have nine and sometimes eight plates. Articulated bands linking rigid shield that encase its hips and shoulders.  The head, tail and legs are covered by smaller plates. The underside of the animals has no armour. When threatened the armadillo pulls in its legs and presses its body onto the ground.

No doubt the armour is heavy and therefore the animals can’t swim. If in the water it just sinks to the bottom. One advantage it has that it can hold its breath up to six minutes. It had been seen to just walk across the stream at the bottom.  It also is able to inflate its stomach and intestines with air and floats across.

NOCTURNAL

The armadillo sleeps by day and feed by night. It eats a wide variety of food from insect, small mammals, reptiles, bird egg, nestlings, fruits, succulent roots, fungi and even to carrion.  The way of adapting helps it a lot to survive.

The animals find its food in the dark by scuttling busily over the ground and stopping when it thinks it found something good to eat. If it finds a buried prey it will dig with its long, powerful claws on its front feet. At the same time it closes the nostrils to protect to get chocked with dirt or dust. While it doing this it supports itself with it s hind quarters and tail and scatter the sail away. 

In the south the nine-banded armadillo eats mainly on ants and termites like the other five species of armadillo. It breaks into the nests and gathers the ants, eggs and larvae with it long sticky tongue.  With its furious appetite it can clear whole nets in contract with the anteater which only eat a small portion and let the nest recover to used for another meal.

BURROWS

As the night ends the armadillo stops searching for food and goes into burrows for safety. One animal can dig a dozens of these burrows right across it s territory. Therefore, it always goes to the nearest burrow as the dawn breaks.

The armadillo will dig burrows complex and being a low as 2to 5m underground.  It has to entrances and several chambers which are lined with grass and leaves. When it goes into one of those burrows it usually covers the entrance with vegetation.

Sometime it shares it with another armadillo of the same sex but mostly it is a solitary animal. Females are very protective of their territory. Males are wondering over a wide range and sometime over lapping with each other

Territories are marked with scent. The animal has scent gland on its feet which deposits its scent as it walks about. When it smells an alien scent it will retreat to it home territory unless it is looking for a mate.

BREEDING

Mating is always in the summer but the time various to according to the area they are in. The gestation takes some four months. It also can occur that there is a delayed imp plantation of the egg which could anything up to 14 weeks. The reason is to make sure the birth is the time where plenty of food is about.

The implanted eggs normally split into four and there will be identical quadruplets born. The off=spring will be fed on mother’s milk for a few weeks and then she leads them to forage for food.  They stay together as a family and sometime brothers and sisters live in a burrow without their mother. After a year they definitely split and find a territory for themselves.

MORE INFORMATION

The armadillos’ ancestors were giants. They had shells up to 3m long. They survived up to 20,000 years ago. It was also discover that their shells were used as roofs by the people who lived at that time.

Since the number of bands on its body vary a great deal this particular species is also know as the long nose armadillo.