08/15/2025
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A small mammal who loves warm weather, has an armor like shell and leathery skin, and meaning “little armored one” in Spanish, Armadillos are a cute yet strange animal to come across. Unlike a lot of animals with shells, horns, or other boney plating, the armor of an armadillo, called carapace, is composed entirely of bone that grows straight out from their vertebrae.
One of almost two dozen armadillo species, but the only one in the United States and our state mammal, the Mexican long nosed armadillo (called the nine banded armadillo until recently as it was discovered that it is in fact a different species), loves to sleep and eat. It can sleep up to 16 hours and eat up to a pound of food a day, feeding almost exclusively on insects like ants, termites, and beetles, while using their very sticky tongue to scoop up their dinner. 🐜🪲
They’re exceptional at, well, everything. Almost. They have long, sharp claws that are excellent for digging burrows and forage pits, they can hold their breath for up to 6 minutes and are excellent swimmers, jump 4 feet in the air, and on top of all that, their sense of smell is so good, they can smell insects 8” underground! 👃
What aren't they good at? Seeing. Mexican long nosed armadillos lack light-detecting cells in their eyes, called cones, so their vision is fairly fuzzy and colorless. The light-sensing rods they do have though, are so sensitive that in the daytime, they’re practically blind! 👀
