Wild Facts

Welcome back to another exciting week of bizarre animal facts.  I hope all of you enjoyed your weekend as much as I did.  We are going to start the week by heading to Argentina to learn about the smallest species of armadillo.  So if you are with me then grab your passport, make sure your liquids are not in your carry-on and don’t even think about saying Hi to Jack once you are in the airport.  Good, we are all ready to go so let’s head to South America!

As I mentioned the Pink Fairy Armadillo is the smallest of the armadillo family weighing in under a pound and measuring only about 6 inches in length, excluding their tail.  The colour of this armadillo is also unique. If you haven’t figured it out by the name and the picture then I guess you are having a rough start to the week.  Instead of waiting for you to finish your coffee and catch onto the colour of the armadillo, I will just let you know that they are indeed pink.  Technically, they are a pale rose colour but since I am a dude, my colour palette doesn’t have the weird colours like rose.

The pink fairy armadillo loves to eat ants and will do so by burrowing close to ant hills.  This doesn’t seem fair for the ants but you just can’t control who buys the property next to your house.  If you look around the virtual version of Argentina you will quickly notice that the pink fairy armadillo lives in a dry environment with a lot of sand.  This works well for this little hard shelled animal since they are excellent at digging.  The question that I ask is, does the pink fairy armadillo live in the desert because they are great at digging? Or are they great at digging because they live in the desert? I will let you make your own guess to the answer.  Either way this armadillo is an impressive digger and has the ability to bury itself in a matter of seconds if they feel threatened.  Interesting enough they will use their hard shell to act as a plug to the quickly made burrow.

Unfortunately, the pink fairy armadillo has been listed as threatened since 1970. An increase in the human population, which is causing habitat destruction is putting these animals at risk. Their numbers continue to dwindle.  This is just one of the many animals that are at risk due to habitat destruction.  When will we learn, right? Again, I will let you guess the answer to this question.

Well, that is Monday’s version of Wild Facts!  See you all tomorrow!