The armadillo, Spanish for “little armored one,” was allegedly named by the 16th century explorer Hernan Cortes. It is truly a medieval knight of the animal kingdom. Known to biologists as Dasypodidae, it is absolutely unique because of a protective coat of some 2,000 small bony discs covered with a leathery skin on its heads, legs and bodies that allows it to plunge into areas with briars and thorns and helps it avoid, although not always prevent, predator attacks. As John James Audubon described the armadillo, "This singular production of nature ...resembles a small pig saddled with the shell of a turtle."

One variety, the three-banded armadillo, can actually roll into a ball to protect its vulnerable under parts, just like a hedgehog. Others only contain armor on their dorsal side and quickly burrow into the ground and lie flat when threatened.

Armadillos, in the order Edentata (literally “toothless”) are close kin to sloths and anteaters, and like anteaters have pointy snouts and small eyes. But unlike anteaters, they do have a number of small molars. They range in size from the 6-inch-long 3-ounce pink fairy armadillo to the 5 feet long, 130-pound, giant armadillos, and their colors vary from pink to brown, red, black, gray and yellow.

The habitat of the 20 species of armadillo runs from mostly the southern part of the United States to Latin America, but only one species, the nine-banded armadillo (Dasypus novemcinctus) lives in the United States. The range of the nine-banded variety has been expanding in the last 150 years largely with the help of humans. This medium size (9- to 20-pound) armadillo, also known as the “Hillbilly Speed Bump” because of its unfortunate tendency to get hit by cars, is the only armadillo that can swim. It is postulated that it can hold its breath and walk along the bottoms of streams. The largest, the giant armadillo (Priodontes giganteus), is found only in the eastern part of South America, usually near water.

Armadillos live in many different habitats, including mixed grassland, rain forests, thorn scrub, wooded bottomlands, shady wetlands, and sandy soil, but they do need a temperate or warm climate because their metabolisms are slow and they don’t have fat stores to protect them from the cold.

Armadillos are mostly nocturnal and spend a large part of their lives digging burrows up to 25 feet long and 5 feet deep, often next to trees or bushes, either for emergency purposes or as homes. Their permanent abodes are elaborate and include tunnels with numerous entrances that they are willing to share with other creatures. They are champion sleepers, napping for up to sixteen hours a day, and emerging from their burrows for early morning and evening foraging, depending on the seasonal temperatures.

Opportunistic eaters, armadillos dig for insects, grubs, worms, small vertebrates, spiders, snails, scorpions, and even eggs, plants, fruit and carrion. They are ideally equipped, with their strong legs, large front claws and sticky, long tongues, for snacking on ants and termites, and they have an incredible sense of smell that helps them find food and sense their enemies (which include coyotes, foxes, wildcats and domestic dogs). When they are looking for food, armadillos grunt and move around constantly and concentrate on their work in a zen-like fashion, probing in crevices and holes and under dead leaves and stones. They love mud baths, as long as the mud isn’t too deep.

Loners when it is not mating season, female armadillos in July and August become friendly with males and produce four same sex and genetically identical kits in a delayed embryo implantation process in the spring, all from a single egg. They can postpone pregnancy as long as three years if their living conditions are stressful. Their kits are born already completely equipped and ready to rumble, except for their armor, which takes weeks to harden.

Armadillos are cat-like in that they bury their excrement. They keep their nests clean, carrying fresh leaves and grass to the nest under their bodies while hopping backwards. They can be tamed, although they do not adapt well to life in a zoo. Because of loss of habitat and hunting of armadillos for food, especially in Latin America, some armadillo species are considered threatened.

Armadillos are harmless to people except for minor damage done to human habitats by rooting around, burrowing and tunneling while searching for food or creating homes. However, according to the Humane Society of the United States, this damage is usually transient because armadillos will eventually move to another location, and they may actually help gardeners by eating harmful insects, including fire ants. It’s also relatively easy to repair any destruction armadillos may cause by modifying the habitat. This can be accomplished by removing the brush or weeds they like to move around in, restricting their water access, and using buried fencing with an overhang or unstable plastic fencing to prevent tunneling or climbing.

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