The burrows themselves are amazing structures. “So even if you only have a few armadillos living in the area, you have lots of these holes, and they’re only using one at any given time.” “Each armadillo usually digs about ten of them within their little home range,” he says. And they found plenty of burrows to study.
And we started noticing these patterns.”Īs patterns revealed new research questions, DeGregorio encouraged his students to point their motion-triggered cameras at armadillo burrows whenever they were in the field. “The more cameras we put out, the more time we spent in the field, the more and more interested I got in the armadillos. Armadillos weren’t the initial targets of their research, but they proved hard to resist. In their work, they spend a lot of time setting up wildlife cameras in various parts of the state and examining the images they find. “Fayetteville is a really fast-growing area, so I’m really interested in how the mammal community changes as we develop,” he says. Home Is Where the Burrow IsĭeGregorio, his colleagues and his students study the shifting wildlife of Arkansas. It turns out their pesky burrows have a lot to offer local communities. “Some of my students are born and raised in Arkansas, and they’ve said that growing up, the prevailing thing to do when you see an armadillo is shoot it,” says Brett DeGregorio, a wildlife biologist and principal investigator at the USGS Fish and Wildlife Cooperative Research Unit at the University of Arkansas.īut people encountering nine-banded armadillos might want to reconsider their attitudes. And all too often, these incursions into human territory cost the cat-sized animals their lives. Those holes can disrupt agricultural fields, backyard gardens and golf courses. Whenever they arrive, they start digging - either to find tasty insects or grubs to eat, or to carve out the large burrows they call home. Why the hatred? Nine-banded armadillos ( Dasypus novemcinctus) - the only armadillo species in the United States - have slowly expanded their range through the southern and midwestern United States over the past few decades, a process that’s sped up in recent years. “Pests” is a common word, as are “invaders” and even “speed bumps.” Many homeowners brag of “eradicating” them from their properties.
When people encounter armadillos, they usually describe the armored mammals in derogatory terms.
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