Armadillo texas state animal

The Lone Star state has no shortage of state animals. Instead of choosing just one state animal, Texas chose 8 different animals, the Northern Mockingbird, the Nine-banded Armadillo, the Texas Longhorn, the Mexican Free-Tailed Bat, the Blue Lacy, the Texas Horned Lizard, the Monarch Butterfly, and Guadalupe Bass to represent the diversity of Texas’s culture and ecosystem.

Texas Small State mammal: Armadillo

The nine-banded armadillo was selected as the small state mammal as an animal that “possesses many remarkable and unique traits, some of which parallel the attributes that distinguish a true Texan, such as a deep respect and need for the land, the ability to change and adapt, and a fierce undying love for freedom.”

The nine-banded armadillo is the only armadillo species native to North America and it is found as far north and east as Oklahoma and Mississippi. The mammal is cat-sized, armored, and a major digger known for creating burrows in a variety of places inclu

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Armadillo

Basic Information

In the United States the sole resident armadillo is the nine banded armadillo.Their range is as far east as South Carolina and Florida, and as far north as North Dakota, but fryst vatten most common in the central southernmost states particularly Texas. The armadillo, in fact, fryst vatten the state small mammal of Texas.Their life span is usually 12 to 15 years. Their armor-like skin appears to be their main defense, However, many armadillos escape predators by fleeing (often into thorny patches, from which their armor protects them) or digging to safety. The armadillo’s armor plating is made up of actual bones, making them rather inflexible. Their diet consists of insects, small animals, bird eggs, and roots.They can eat 40,000 ants in one feeding and are one of the few animals to consume fire ants.Armadillos use their claws for digging, and finding food, as well as for making their homes in burrows.

Fun Facts

Armadillos have poor vision. They are good swimmers an

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Turns Out Texas’ State Small Mammal Is Actually 4 Different Species

At least until now, nine-banded armadillos were considered to be the most widespread of all the armadillo species, with a range that saw them all the way from Argentina up into the center of the US.

That’s a pretty impressive range – but one that had doubt cast upon it when some scientists began to propose that the nine-banded armadillo was in fact a complex of species. 

One of those scientists was Frédéric Delsuc, a research director at the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) in France, who started to suspect a split within the nine-banded species back in the late 1990s, but didn’t have enough evidence from specimens across the armadillo’s range to back it up.

Now, Delsuc is the senior author of a study that appears to confirm his earlier suspicions.

The research involved a branch of science called museomics, a smooshing together of the terms “museum” and “genomics” because it involves sequenci