Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 47.djvu/368

356 fat. The flesh of the animal is highly prized by the natives, but its rank flavor generally repels other residents. It is usually placed upon the table roasted whole, as we prepare a young pig.'

On many of the dry and barren plains of Central America the armadillo is the only mammal. There, like the Florida gopher, it shares its burrow with a fellow-tenant, the deadly rattlesnake, which it does not seem to dread in the least. The snake, on the other hand, though it could easily insert its fangs into the armadillo's skin between its bands and plates of armor, seems to know better than to harm its good-natured landlord. Wild creatures often seem thus to tolerate one another's presence, and even to have a friendly understanding which man can not fully comprehend.

The various species of living armadillos differ in the number of movable bands of armor, and are named accordingly. The common species of Central America, Mexico, and southern Texas is the nine-banded armadillo (Tatusia novemcincta). My pets, Jack and Jill, belong to the South American species (Dasypus sexcinctus), and my description of them will therefore apply to the six-banded armadillo in general.

The two sexes resemble each other closely in size, structure, and outline. The total length of both Jack and Jill is nineteen inches, including the tail, which is six inches. The girth of the body is twelve inches, and it is plump and rounded like that of a puppy or young pig. When the legs are straightened, as in walking, the highest part of the back is six inches from the ground.

The head, three inches and a half in length and conical in shape, is covered above with a single plate of armor which extends on the sides to the eyebrows and lengthwise from a point three quarters of an inch from the end of the nose to a line drawn between the ears. Next behind the ears is a movable transverse band of armor nearly three fourths of an inch in width, separated from the head plate in front of it and from the next band behind it by a narrow space of chocolate-colored, rough, wrinkled, and pliable skin. Following this is another plate over the shoulders, two inches in width at the top, and gradually widening as it extends downward to the neck under the ears.

Now follow one after another the six movable bands from which this species is named. They are all alike, each three fourths of an inch in width, and separated from one another by similar spaces of leathery skin, as above described. Behind these six bands is the posterior plate, four inches wide and ending at the roots of the tail. The tapering tail has four movable bands, followed by a continuous plate extending to the tip.

Besides the armor thus described as protecting the head, back,