On Armadillos

The armadillo is one of the most unusual mammals alive today.¹ Few animals have undergone such dramatic changes over millions of years.² They roll themselves into a ball when threatened, wear armor made of bone, and dig burrows with a mechanical efficiency that would impress any engineer.

Their ancestors, the glyptodonts, were the size of a small car. Imagine encountering one of those on a walk. You would not be taking that walk for much longer.

What fascinates me about armadillos is not just their strangeness but their persistence. They have survived ice ages, continental shifts, and the arrival of every predator imaginable. They are still here, still armored, still digging.

There is something to learn from that.

Footnotes

1. They are the only living mammals with a true bony shell, called the osteoderm. The nine-banded armadillo always gives birth to genetically identical quadruplets. ↩

2. Their ancestors reached up to 1,500 kg. Doedicurus roamed South America until roughly 10,000 years ago. ↩