Nine-banded armadillo

Armadillos find food by smell, snuffling along with their snout close to the ground and digging quickly with their strong claws to reach grubs and insects. They have poor eyesight and can be surprisingly oblivious to people.

When startled, they often jump straight up — which is why so many are killed by cars that would otherwise have passed over them. They can cross streams by walking along the bottom, holding their breath for several minutes, or by gulping air to float.

The species expanded north from Mexico across Texas and the Gulf states during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, spreading into Georgia over the last century, and it continues to move north.

Armadillos eat vast numbers of insects and their larvae, including fire ants and beetle grubs, and their burrows are used as shelter by rabbits, snakes, opossums and other animals.

They are also a biological puzzle: each litter comes from a single fertilised egg that splits into four, so all four young are genetically identical — a quirk that has made them useful to medical research.

Mating — summer
Delayed implantation — the fertilised egg rests for about three to four months before implanting
Pregnancy — about four months after implantation
Birth — late winter and spring, almost always four identical young, born with soft shells
Weaning — at about two to three months old
Independence — within several months
Lifespan — often several years in the wild

• Most armadillo deaths are on roads at night; they jump up when startled rather than running.
• They root in lawns for grubs; reducing grubs reduces digging.
• Wear gloves if handling an armadillo; some carry the bacterium that causes Hansen's disease (leprosy), though the risk from casual contact is very low.
• A burrow under a porch can be closed after the animal has left, making sure no young are inside.

• Armadillos roll into a ball. Only the three-banded armadillos of South America can do that; the nine-banded armadillo runs or digs.
• Armadillos are pests that harm the garden. They eat grubs, beetles and fire ants; the holes are the price of that service.
• An armadillo on the road will run out of the way. It is more likely to leap straight up.

• Virginia opossum
• Eastern mole