In her den deep beneath the dry grassland of Central America, scorched by the daytime heat of April, a female nine-banded armadillo suckles her four scaly, month-old babies. Armadillo babies are unique - they are always sets of identical quadruplets, produced from a single fertilised egg cell that splits into four equal parts.The nine-banded armadillo is one of the few South American mammals to have successfully invaded the North American continent. Its success is due to its ability to burrow deep below the ground. There it can escape the burning heat of the day and the intense cold of the night in the dry grasslands of Mexico and Texas. Its burrows are up to 25ft (7.6m) long and many of them go as deep as 11ft (3.4m) beneath the surface.
An armadillo digging is a remarkable sight. It scrapes with its forelegs at the hard-packed earth while its hind legs kick the loosened soil backwards out of the burrow entrance. Its tail is braced against the floor of the burrow to bear its weight, allowing its hind legs to swing free.
Armadillos feed mostly at night on creatures such as insects, spiders and occasional lizards dug out from the soil. If it detects a predator such as a coyote, an armadillo can bury itself in seconds, or roll into a ball and rely on its bony plates as a shield. Despite the heaviness of these bony plates, armadillos can swim well when water is available, but to avoid sinking must fírst gulp in air to give themselves buoyancy.
