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National Geographic : 1982 Jun
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hours. I could not feed the babies with a nip ple or medicine dropper, since I could not get them to nurse and swallow. Reluctantly, I resorted to a stomach tube fitted with a hy podermic syringe to measure the liquid and gently introduce it into each tiny stomach. Then each morning, tired and red-eyed, I trundled my babies back to work with me. Not all of them survived, and each loss was a personal one, as well as a professional defeat. When a set of quadruplets dwindles to three, the survivors are still of scientific interest; when only two remain, their value is marginal. A sole survivor is only a pet. One complete set lived to maturity. This we named the Jet Set, because of the speed at which they streaked around their pen. Their shells were undersized and did not seem large enough to fit their bodies, looking like six-inch crusts on eight-inch pies. But the Jetters were so active and friendly that I did not have the heart to use them for Hand-size at three months, the "little armored one" reaches an average length of two feet. Branded "Hoover hog" in the Depression,armadillomeat finds fans today as "Texas turkey." experiments; in that context, my first at tempt to hand-rear armadillos failed. The next year was happier. Our animal quarters were ready, and we were able to bring pregnant animals in from the wild in early January, giving them more time to adapt. Many gave birth to young and suck led them successfully. In the spring we learned how to dig into armadillo burrows to obtain litters of quadruplet young that were old enough to eat on their own. Within four years about half my colony of 300 animals were members of quadruplet sets. Members of an Ancient Order Though my attempts to rear armadillos suggest their vulnerability in captivity, they are actually champion survivors in the wild. Armadillos, tree sloths, and anteaters are the only living remnants of the order Xenarthra, which evolved and flourished in South America beginning about 55 million years ago. Some of the ancient xenarthrans were enormous. Two and a half million years ago, after the Panamanian land bridge connecting the Americas rose from the seas, some of these animals migrated into what is now the U. S., where they flourished. An extinct ani mal resembling the nine-banded armadillo but larger (Dasypus bellus) was once numer ous near my present home in Florida. And an even larger one (Holmesina septentrio nalis), about the size of a black bear, ranged as far north as Kansas and North Carolina. "All the armadillos in the United States vanished about five to ten thousand years ago," Dr. Gordon Edmund of the Royal On tario Museum told me. The reasons for this are still unknown. The tens of thousands of nine-banded armadillos that now exist in Florida are probably descendants of a fe cund few that escaped from captivity near Cocoa, Florida, only half a century ago. The immigrant nine-banded armadillos from South America did survive in Mexico, and from there, during the 19th century, be gan one of the most rapid expansions in mammalian history. They were first report ed in southern Texas in 1854. Blocked by the western deserts, they spread north to Kan sas and Missouri and east toward Florida. Pioneers crossed the Mississippi in the early 1940s. Their usual method of fording The AstonishingArmadillo 825
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