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.

COATIS AND RINGTAILS

COATI

THE COATIS

The coatis are one group of four species of raccoons. The most known is the ring-tailed coati. It lives in the forest of South America and southern USA, east of the Andes, south to northern Argentina and Uruguay.

The coatis are the only raccoons which are active during the day. The females are very sociable and they live in groups up to 25 animals young and older ones. They are very noisy and they chatter, snort, and grunt as well as whine and scream.

They are smaller and slender than the other raccoons. They have smaller ears and a long, pointed, mobile snout. Their coat is coloured mostly of a reddish-brown but coatis also can have cinnamon-brown to a browny-grey. The face is not as masked as the other raccoons. However, it has a white circle around each eye, white spots on the cheeks and a white stripe running down to the base of the muzzle.

The long, tapered and grasping tail has not clearly marked rings and serves as a balance when climbing trees. When the coatis move on the ground the tail is held upwards.

The coatis sleep at night high up in the trees and coming down most of the days to hunt for food. Each hunts within a 1km but sometimes it overlaps with the neighbour's area.

The diet of coatis is mainly grubs, ants, termites, spiders and centipedes. They search with their long, mobile snout in the forests litter or rotting wood and rock crevices. Females also kill and eat small invertebrates and lizards. The male kills rodent by pressing then to the ground. When a tree has a lot of fruit; they soon assemble there and strip it clean. The females and young one will stop hunting for food during the day and groom each other.

Young males are ready to mate at the age of two to three years. He leaves the group and thereafter is only allowed there at mating time. He moves in with grooming the females and acting submissive. He mates with every female and after that they chase him out.

Birth takes place after 77 days. In a nest built by the female in a tree she gives birth to three or five very badly developed babies. The stay there for five to six weeks. The mother only leaves for a little time to find food. After that she brings them down and joins the group again. They are weaned after four months and they reach maturity a year later.

THE RINGTAILS

Ringtails are smaller than coatis. In this group there are two types. One is, of course, the ringtail and the other is called cacomistle and they both live in southern USA. The ringtail mostly lives amongst rocky outcrops but it also can be found in other place. The cacomistle mainly lives in tropical forests.

The fur of the ringtails is on the top yellow-grey and dirty white on the underneath. Its face is fox-like with large ears and eyes. They do not have these black face masks but have white rings around the eyes. Their tail is very long and bushy with dark rings. They also have hair on their soles and can slightly retract their claws.

The cacomistle is mostly dark coloured and their tail is even longer but the rings are not very distinguishable. The ears are pointed and the claws are not retractable.

Most of the year the ringtail lives by itself and can have a territory of up to 3sqkm. The area is marked by scent of urine. If in danger, it violently screams and squirts a foul-smelling liquid from its anal glands. It is very lively, like a squirrel, leaping and climbing very steep surfaces. It is also capable to hang upside down and clings to the branch with its hind-legs.

The ringtail acquired several name because of the variety of its ability. The frontier miner used it to control the rats and it became the 'miner's cat'. It also was named the civet cat because of the foul smelling secretion when it feels threatened. Finally it is also known under the name of 'cat-squirrel' because of its agility.

Both species are the most meat consuming raccoons. They have both canid-like teeth because of that. They spend both the day sleeping. The ringtail in a den lined with moss and leaves and the cacomistle up on a tree. When it gets dark and they wake up, they groom themselves thoroughly. They hunt rather by waiting and ambush. They jump and hold the victim down while they bite their neck. Their diet is small mammals, birds, snakes, lizards, toads and frogs with 25% only of fruit, grain, and nuts.

The mating season for both the species is in the late winter or early spring. They give birth of up to 5 young ones after 52 days and either in dens or nests. It is surprising that both parents look after the young ones but the major part has the female. At birth they weigh 28g. When born, they are blind and open their eyes only after four or five weeks which is when they start feeding on solid food. At two months they start hunting with the female and at four months they are weaned. They start mating when they are one year old.

Top of F

Bottom of Form