The nine-banded armadillo is not an old Texan. It crossed the Rio Grande in the 1800s and has been expanding north and east ever since — through Texas, across the South, and now into Nebraska and Illinois — one of the fastest range expansions of any American mammal. What limits it is cold: it cannot hibernate, stores very little fat, and lives on insects it digs out of soft ground, so hard freezes stop it. It also has one genuinely strange trait — a female always bears identical quadruplets from a single egg, four clones in every litter.
Getting there
29.7000, -96.7500
Locations are approximate and may be inaccurate, on private land, or otherwise inaccessible. Check before you travel.
Hear it from the road
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