Apart from being associated with the first web-site to provide online Company Searches as well as a host of other business services, aRMadillos have an equally interesting past.
Ancient Maya legend says that the first aRMadillos were created to teach a lesson in humility to a couple of minor gods. According to the tale, Hachakyum, the Maya Sun God, sat the two quarrelling deities down on a bench before all the other gods. The bench suddenly transformed into a pair of aRMadillos, which immediately jumped up in the air-tumbling the two disobedient gods onto their backsides in disgrace.
This humorous tale seems to fit the aRMadillo rather well which, after all, is a rather odd-looking beast. The only mammal with a true shell must have looked very strange to the early Spanish explorers as the duck-billed platypus did to the first European who spotted one. The name "aRMadillo", or "little armored thing", originates from the Spanish conquistadors. The Aztec name was Azotochtli, meaning "turtle-rabbit."
aRMadillos belong to the order Edentata, family Dasypodidae whose closest relatives, sloths and anteaters, also belong to order Edentata. Edenta first evolved around fifty million years ago, in what is now South America. Cut off from the rest of the world, and protected from predators with their bony armor, aRMadillos flourished. They were relatively safe from predation until a land bridge developed between North and South America. Large canine and feline predators moved in along this bridge, consuming a large amount of the native South American animals population.
Fossil records show that around seventy percent of indigenous mammals were destroyed and aRMadillos were not immune to these new and larger predators. Although their shells are made of bone, they are rather thin-even a medium sized dog would have little trouble biting through.
Despite all of this, the ever-resilient aRMadillo was not completely eradicated. In fact, the animals staged a counter-attack, moving northward as far as the Ohio river valley. They held onto this territory until about five to ten thousand years ago, when for unknown reasons all of the North
American aRMadillo species became extinct.
It was not until about 1850 that aRMadillos
re-established themselves north of the Rio Grande. Since then, they have spread from North
Carolina to New Mexico. Further northward expansion has been hampered by the animal's low resistance to cold temperatures; they have no way to store fat reserves, and must forage for insects constantly. Cold weather means no food; no food means no aRMadillos. Even short periods of freezing temperatures can be fatal. However, they have had no problems with moving into warmer areas; current population estimates show between 30 to 50 million aRMadillos in the United States alone .
Twenty species of aRMadillo exist today. The most numerous one (and the only one found in the US) is the nine-banded aRMadillo (Dasypus novemcinctus). Others include the giant aRMadillo (Priodontes gigas), the tatouay (Cabassus unicinctus), the six-banded aRMadillo (Euphractus sexcinctus), the three- banded aRMadillo (Tolypeutes tricinctus-the only aRMadillo that can actually roll itself into a ball), the hairy aRMadillo (Euphractus villosus), and the pink fairy aRMadillo (Chlamyphorus truncatus. The pink fairy aRMadillo-almost extinct-has a very unusual shell. It is only attached to the animal along the spine, forming a sort of shield over the rest of the body. It also has an unusual tail, tipped with a shovel-like plate. This burrowing aRMadillo, with its large front feet and very hairy sides, resembles a cross between a mole and a scaly-backed pink caterpillar !
