@@grimm3287 I have a picture of my friend holding up a dead armadillo in Tennessee when we were driving thru so I have PROOF!!! We live in Delaware and he used a paper towel to protect his hand, I know they carry diseases.... just saying. I KNOW they are in Tennessee!
3:41 I like that you point out pretty much the initial key to evolution, that is random mutations popping up periodically that get selected for by a population of animals and even plants. Basically mutations can either prove beneficial, impair or even not effect the overall survival of an organism which must not only live long enough to reproduce but reproduce more often for these traits, these mutations to be passed on to future generations. It's how things can change overtime, because ALL lifeforms are constantly mutating, it's just at a very slow rate and an accumulation of many, MANY subtle changes over the eons that eventually leads to larger and stranger, more noticable adaptations. The only reason why animal species are seemingly so uniform and distinct in body shapes and traits is because these things get selected for by the struggle for survival, meaning that things that produced the best, long term results stuck around throughout the generations while things that didn't will either disappear or only rarely pop up, negative or neutral mutations alike. But what determines good or bad or benign mutations is honestly up to circumstances like whether, geography, food availability, competition, predator to prey relationships and etc.
There is a mistake; there are a fairy amount of cold-adapted armadillos today. At least here in Argentina there are several species living in Patagonia. And all the species living in the high altitudes are very cold resistant
We still have many species of armadillos down here in Uruguay, that map is inaccurate. There's also a fossil found here of a 'missing link' it is an armadillo shell that is only divided in two pieces while modern species have up to nine folds.
I actually love this channel so much. 10/10 the reading voice and the animation is spot on. funnily enough I found this channel through recommendations 👏 just great job hahhaaha
One of the best channels on RU-vid. Beautifully made videos with relevant and up to date information. One of the best in its kind. I’m glad I found this channel .
about ten years ago I got to spend some time in the Summertown TN area. People told me the armadillos were recent arrivals, but appreciated because they eat Fire Ants, another recent immigrant. So the Xenarthrans continue succeeding.
6:40 Idk about that habitat range, in Argentina to my knowledge at least we have armadillos(quirquinchos) and fairy armadillos(pichiciego) as far south as the provinces of Mendoza and Neuquen and it gets very cold in desert regions. Great videos btw!
@@Superbug-tf8zy To be fair that range was probably a generalization, but in winter it's not uncommon for puddles to freeze over at night and to get one day a year that it snows which could be more if it wasn't a desert.
The only trait that can prevent a species from going extinct now is by evoking cuteness or awe in humans. Either those two or tasting delicious and being easy to keep as livestock. The others are on a clock. All of them.
It's been within my lifetime that I saw armadillos migrate into my own back yard, and I have got to say they have occupied a niche I didn't even realize was empty. I love those little precious lepers!
Congratulations for this video! Armadillos are native here in Brazil and have already been widely consumed as game meat, which fortunately is quite rare today. But one of them has always been spared. Euphractus sexcinctus, known here as the tatu-peba (smelly armadillo, in guarani language), is reputed to eat dead people in cemeteries and is therefore considered disgusting. Truth or lie, lucky him! ...
My favorite part in all of these videos is that collective "oh shit" moment, experienced by all of the animal kingdom when we arrived at the scene 10000 years ago, sharpening a spear and chewing bubblegum
How to get rid of the double bed for your bed room with a bed in the morning and 6 hours of the night and then the rest of the night and a muslim of joy with her husband as well she is the best country for him in all her family history is there and how she will feel about the 1800s
Definitely the creepiest thing I ever saw involving giant armadillos was a 5-part special on animals in North America during the Ice Age. They had a jaguar sitting in front of an adult Doedicarus, chewing it's face off while it stood there. It's scary seeing a large cat casually using a rhino-sized animal's face as a chew toy, but worse when they show the skull afterwards with huge gouges directly where the brain was.
Thinking about the one with horns on its snout, perhaps they were used to aid in digging and burrowing? Armadillos where I live can dig and burrow with their claws, but I imagine that in a harder, rockier terrain, horns might also have helped with this. Possibly not, they may have been a purely defensive adaptation, but it might have helped them dig for food or something similar.
Possibly, maybe that's why the horned gopher was horned as well. I suppose the problem is there are no animals that do that today so it's difficult to make a comparison
@@mothlightmedia1936 well, pigs, they have defenses which are somewhat similar to horns and are amazing diggers. Those horns could have been used to impress others, or to fight, while they could still use their heads to dig
@@mothlightmedia1936 As a human who's dug a lot of holes in rocky terrain, I can say it's hard to fathom a digging animal having those horns and not using them to dig. If I have to dig a hole in poor ground, I take 4-8 different hand tools and anticipate possibly having to improvise a couple more. I can definitely see situations where those horns would be very useful and the claws alone would fail and have to go around or try another spot. Also, if you watch un-horned mammals digging, they do typically use their noses a lot, especially to manipulate rocks. It's easy to see how once the adaptation began to appear, it would have had an immediate use and benefit without any behavioural change, even just as a couple of hard patches on the snout, without the later benefits of being tools in themselves, so I'd expect it to have been pretty strongly selected for.
I know they're not closely related, but... maybe cover the most similar animal to armadillos by way of convergent evolution, pangolins? Love those cute guys.
Wilfred Darr There’s an infamous paleoart of a stegosaur attempting to mount a prosauropod, and it shows what a stegosaurus penis might have looked like. (It’s probably based of accounts of giraffes attempting to mount a donkey at a zoo).
Ayyye I totally know where the photo for the background of the armadillo at 3:10 is from. I'm 100% sure that's the santa catalina mountains north of tucson az cuz I can see window rock peak. Wouldn't be surprised if it was taken in the sabino canyon area.
I think it's less that armor genes are rare, and more that no amount of armor is as protective as not being hit in the first place, so speed and camouflage are positively selected for over shielding.
OH MY GOD. I live in the States and I've always thought all armadillos are like cat sized. The armadillo is a staple of Texas/western culture and I just figured there was only the one. I can't believe they can be so massive in different places. When you casually said armadillos are dog sized I had to look it up myself and sure enough they can be so big. Insane.
I love it when watching theses types of videos and they say “fairly recently” “as recently as” and it’s 500million+ years ago. Ah yes last month, in earth’s life time.
I used to pass by this armadillo roadkill in my neighborhood whenever I would take a walk. it was stiff, on its back, and would always creep the hell out of me when I saw it. I suspected it was an armadillo, but wasnt sure cause I thought they only lived in the southwest (I'm from georgia). but after finding out tons of armadillos live here and that the animal I saw was most likely one, I'm OBSESSED. I live in the suburbs, so getting random spottings of wildlife here (deer, frogs, rabbits, oppossum, etc.) is both a little scary and interesting
Cool I’m from Maine so I have very little knowledge of their range *i have no idea why I typed it like I was smart or learning something from a tour guide*
I wonder if they developed the armor sorta like Pangolins but as one solid plate instead of the scaled armor like them. As for how they competed with the other large herbivores I'd guess that they were more ground browsers and ate shrubs, glasses, or may have been omnivores than purely herbivores. Other large herbivores might have grazed other plants or trees. I would say they had a niche very similar to ankylosaurs of being slow shorter heavily armored grazers.
Armadillos are now found in N Tennessee, won't be long till found in Kentucky. And has anyone else noted the fact that Armadillos, Skunks and Possums all apparently went to the same Road Crossing School
Only shelled mammal? With a strict def of shell? If armadillos don't meet the strict def of shell, like a snail or turtle, then I suppose you could also claim pangolins as another mammal that sort of has a shell. Both "shells" are segmented, in different ways. One shell is banded, the other shell is scaled. Banded armor vs scale armor. Similar results. Both curl into a defensive ball.
Genes showing a much different realationship than bodyshape would suggest highlights beautifully what evolution can achieve. A very small number of mutations in just the right spots can help a lifeform adapt to a whole new niche. Doedicurus is an interesting case of convergent evolution to Ankylosauria.
Great video, but I must correct something; there ARE armadillos living on cold places, like the patagonian hairy armadillo (Chaetophractus villosus) from southern Chile and Argentina.
Armadillos can carry leprosy and humans can be infected if you handle them or eat them. Became of their low metabolic rate a researcher thought they culture the bacterium in them since the bacterium doesn't grow in petrie dishes. Later they found it was true in nature too.
I’ve never seen one in the wild yet but they are supposedly migrating north into the US more an more. There are a lot of other species with the same niche so I hope they don’t become invasive.
'Here's this cool big animal that went extinct pretty recently. We're not exactly sure what caused it to go extinct, but it tasted a lot like chicken.'
I wonder how well armadillos would do in deserts in other parts of the world, like the Sahara. Their shells are nicely camouflaged to match sand, they are borrowers so they could hide if that'd fail, and they can endure the heat of it, and they wouldn't need a lot of food so they could last long between finding insect hives
Superb work, as usual! If macro-euphractys was a predator-as its sharp teeth in the discovered jawbone would suggest-might this indicate that at least *some* prehistoric xenarthrans had a higher metabolic rate, so that they would have a better chance at chasing down prey? I understand that they *could*-as the video said-have been part-scavengers and part-burrowing, cannibalistic predators...Yet is it at least possible that *some* past groups of xenarthrans diverged from the main evolutionary path of their family (and developed faster metabolic rates to aid in the development of a predatory lifestyle? After all, *most* sharks are cold-blooded, yet *a few species* (such as carcharodon carcarias (great whites) have developed warm bloodedness to be able to tolerate the cold seas that are the habitat of their favourite, fat-and-blubber-rich prey animals: seals.
I Recently Saw An Albino Armadillo Here In Northern Alabama! Armadillos Are Plentiful In Alabama And Florida. I See Them Daily. They Love Eating All Kinds Of Ants. They Are Not Scared Of People.
I live in a temperate zone in the middle of the peampean plain. In Winter it can get every night under minus -0ºC. Frost is common. I have to tell you that Armadillos (Mulitas) exist here nonetheless, so they don't need subtropical temperatures. They just borrow in at night in winter and at noon in summer.
@@Argentvs in America they burrow early in winter and are out late in summer, you can see them everywhere. They are actually living near the mountains of N.C, in the Appalachian area. I live along the coast myself
Could the glyptodon fossil found all the way down into southern Argentina be possibly explained by either or both continental drift climactic changes? Was South America closer to the equator at the time that this giant armadillo specimen was alive, or was it alive during a time between glacial maximums when the climate was generally warmer, or possibly a combination of the two factors?
