Card #008 · Mammals
Nine-banded armadillo
Dasypus novemcinctus
Common LC · Least Concern
Field notes
- Classification
- Order Cingulata · Family Dasypodidae
- Range
- Americas
- Size
- 38–58 cm (+26–53 cm tail)
- Weight
- 2.5–6.5 kg
- Lifespan
- 12–15 yrs
- Diet
- Insectivore
Most Notable
To cross a river it can hold its breath for up to six minutes and walk along the bottom, or gulp air to inflate its stomach and intestines and simply float across.
Almost every litter is a set of four identical quadruplets, all the same sex and genetically identical, grown from a single fertilized egg that splits into four inside the womb.
It is one of the only animals besides humans known to naturally carry the bacterium that causes leprosy, which has made it invaluable to Hansen's disease research.
It is the only armadillo that lives in the United States and the most widespread of all the world's armadillo species. First recorded in Texas around 1850, it has since spread across the Southeast at close to ten times the pace expected of a mammal, reaching as far north as Nebraska and Illinois.
A startled armadillo jumps three to four feet straight up. That reflex works against a coyote, but on modern roads it launches the animal right into the underside of a passing car.
Range: Southern U.S. through Central America to Argentina and Uruguay