"I Want to Go Home with the Armadillo"

The armadillo, so perfectly ugly, perfectly stupid, perfectly imperfect, serves as the ethnic joke for the animal kingdom. Possibly in this case, we should spell that “kingdumb.” With its primitive brain equipped with only a few convolutions, this survivor from the Ice Age faces the modern world with as much finesse as a defrosted Neanderthal Man would exhibit if placed in front of a computer. Since it is difficult to regard the armadillo in the same tender context as all other creatures great and small, not even the most rabid animal rights activist seems compelled to take up the cause of the maligned creature. No one seems heartbroken by the thousands of upended armadillo carcasses littering the highways. When I was a child on long family trips in my car, my sister and I would count cows to pass the time. My children gleefully counted armadillo carcasses and shed not one tear for the rigid cadavers with feet pointing straight to the heavens.

The armadillo is not easy to love. Even the female armadillo when blessed with babes of her own does not seem to be able to work up much maternal adoration. This could be because she always gives birth to a litter of four, all of which are the same sex and identical in every way. Since the quadruplets are the result of a division of a single egg, the members of the litter are genetic echoes of each other. This reproductive phenomenon is one reason for the armadillo’s popularity as a scientific test animal. Because the little dillos of a litter are genetically identical, they are ideal as perfectly controlled specimens.

Since the quadruplets are the result of a division of a single egg, the members of the litter are genetic echoes of each other. This reproductive phenomenon is one reason for the armadillo’s popularity as a scientific test animal.

Other remarkable characteristics of the armadillo make it an interesting subject of study. Almost everyone living in the southern half of the United States has seen an armadillo, but few have been tempted to inspect one at close range. At birth, the stocky body is covered with soft, leathery skin, which gradually ossifies into plates similar to the shell of a turtle. Unlike the turtle’s shell, the plates are separated into sections and allow flexibility. When threatened, the armadillo can roll itself into a facsimile of a cannon ball. The armored encasement covers the back, sides, outside of the legs, the head and usually the tail. The armor not only provides a detriment to predators, but also protects the beast from sharp thorns and rough underbrush.

The short powerful limbs end in grub-gathering claws, custom designed to wreck lawns while seeking succulent insects, worms, snakes or lizards. The worm-shaped tongue is coated with a sticky substance which acts as a sort of Krazy Glue when the dietary delights are unearthed, making the delicacies stick to the tongue’s wart-covered surface. The substance can be stored in special cavities for use when large amounts are needed. The teeth, simple molars without enamel or roots, grow continuously, and are worn down by chewing. If an armadillo does not have a diet of solid food with a hard consistency, its teeth will grow to excessive lengths. Would not that be an appealing addition to an already pretty picture?

The worm-shaped tongue is coated with a sticky substance which acts as a sort of Krazy Glue when the dietary delights are unearthed, making the delicacies stick to the tongue’s wart-covered surface.

The snout houses the most refined sense of the armadillo. The sense of smell compensates for the deficiencies in hearing, taste, and sight. An armadillo can detect a worm lurking twenty centimeters below the surface of the soil with its exceptional sense of smell. There is little evidence of visual observation through the beady eyes which lack cones in the retina, indicating color blindness. If eyes are windows f the soul, we need not discuss soulfulness here. So much for our portrait of physical attributes.

As oafish as this creature seems, it has been given an interesting little bag of tricks as compensation for lack of good looks, brains, and acute senses. When frightened, the armadillo defies its cumbersome appearance and exchanges its habitual shuffling gait for a fast gallop. The creature can also escape a captor by stiffening its body, withdrawing its head and legs and jumping an amazing distance from the grasp of its captor in a true surprise tactic. Requiring less oxygen than dogs or cats of the same size, the armadillo can hold its breath up to six minutes. This helps keep the dust out of its nose while digging. Although the armadillo hardly seems to have the body of a swimmer, by inflating its stomach and intestines with air, it becomes a living inner tube with the buoyancy to float across a river. When this method of crossing water does not seem appealing, the armadillo has the ability to walk across a creek or river on the bottom due to its capacity to hold its breath. This may account in part for the rapid spread of these creatures once they were introduced to an area.

Although the armadillo hardly seems to have the body of a swimmer, by inflating its stomach and intestines with air, it becomes a living inner tube with the buoyancy to float across a river.

If trekking across or under the bodies of water and consistently producing four offspring with every litter is not enough to guarantee a successful invasion of an area, human short-sightedness has aided these walking armored tanks in infiltrating parts of the country where the climate is warm. Initially the armadillos marched northward out of Mexico, crossing the Rio Grande into Texas around 1880. When Texans noticed that the armadillo was devouring insects harmful to crops, the little hero was welcomed and introduced to insect prone areas throughout Texas and parts of Oklahoma.

The infiltration much farther east in Florida was accomplished through dramatic escapes. The first known imports to cross the state line of Florida were a pair of nine-banded armadillos travelling in the company of a sailor who misplaced them. Whoops. They disappeared into the wilds and set up housekeeping. In 1927, a private zoo in Cocoa which had exhibited armadillos was destroyed by a storm facilitating a successful jail-break for several more escapees. A third group quietly left behind a travelling circus which had been exhibiting them in Florida. Even though the numbers of those breaking away from captivity was small, it did not take long for the armadillo to be a familiar part of the Florida landscape. By 1939, specimens were reported all over the Southeastern United States. The progress of the armadillo, an animal once unknown in the United States, has been stopped only by colder temperatures of the more northern states.

Now firmly established as part of life in the South, the minions of armadillos go about the business of living and dying in Dixie. Daylight and temperature dictate the rhythms of the dance of the armadillo. In hot summer, they venture out in the evening, leaving their burrows to trot relentlessly with their snouts just off the ground in search of food. When the olfactory alarm goes off, they dig with ferocious speed, loosening the soil with snout and front feet, piling the dirt under their bellies, then stopping momentarily to kick the dirt behind them. Fat and happy, they return to their simple burrows which are located about two or three feet under the surface of the ground. In the winter, the sunshine hours are for grubbing. When out and about, the male armadillo marks his territory in the same liquid fashion as male dogs do. The male armadillo is so dedicated to territorial behavior in the area of his burrow that his survival rate in a well-kept, clean zoo is very poor. Every time the cages are cleaned, the male armadillo feels compelled to thoroughly remark his territory. Cause of death: dehydration.

No account of the armadillo would be complete without some reference to the slaughter of thousands of the creatures on the highways of the South. The armadillo seems to have a macabre appointment with Death in his date book. The primitive startle reflex of the armadillo is usually responsible for him meeting the bumpers of vehicles head on. When first startled, an armadillo springs into the air. The typical death scene goes something like this: an ordinary armadillo is trotting around on his quest for succulent larvae and happens to cross a highway. Since the beast is oblivious to his surroundings and has only one thing on his primitive little mind (food!), he is not even aware of the change in terrain. Suddenly, though, he becomes aware of the Big Mack truck immediately over his tail and moving at seventy miles per hour. The startle reflex sends him shooting up like a coiled Jack-in-the-Box and Pop Goes the Armadillo as his reflex action not only puts him at the perfect height to hit the truck’s bumper, but also spins him around so he gets a final, quick look at the instrument of his death, eyeball to bumper. Although so many armadillos meet their fate in this tragic way, the numbers left to carry on in the victims’ absence are plentiful enough to assure us that the armadillo is not an endangered species.

After surviving from the Ice Age until today, the oddity that is Armadillo, with his suit of armor, his deficiencies, and his unique and surprising capabilities, probably deserves more esteem than he is given. But as well as being the ethnic joke of the Animal Kingdom, he is also the Rodney Dangerfield of the four-legged set, and he just “don’t get no respect.”