Hi, I'm Danielle Dufault,
and you're watching "Animalogic: Second Nature."
Nature's predators are equipped with all sorts of weapons,
fangs, venom, claws.
There's a million ways to die in the west.
And while some prey species have evolved to be poisonous,
hard to find, or simply faster than their predators,
others have gone a different way.
Unable to outmanoeuvre the animals
that try to snack on them, they became hard candy.
If you gotta be dumb, you gotta be tough.
It's for their protection against wild animals.
These are nature's greatest tanks.
Shields up.
[♪♪♪]
[male announcer] It immediately withdraws
into the snug shelter of its shell
and waits patiently within its well-designed fortress
until the enemy departs.
Mammals are generally softer than other animals.
And armoured mammals are very rare,
but some of those who've turned skin into shields
have prospered for millions of years.
Armadillos are probably the first armoured mammal
you can think of.
They're iconic.
They're off! And it's Cinco de Mayo!
Quickly! It's Cinco de Mayo!
Quickly, they're out of the box!
[Danielle] These hard boys are found mostly in Latin America,
and they're name is Spanish for "the little armoured one."
There are over 20 different species
ranging in size from the diminutive pink fairy armadillo
to the humungous giant armadillo.
Their armour is made of osteoderms,
or dermal bones,
that protect them from predators like jaguars and ocelots.
My favourite species is the three-banded armadillo.
They're unique in that they can bend themselves
into an almost perfect ball at the first sight of danger.
The largest armadillos are about 1.5-metres long,
but if you had to take a stroll along the Amazon
20,000 years ago,
you could've seen their cousins, the glyptodons.
These armoured tanks were about the size of a car,
and some had spiny tails.
They had to duke it out with sabre-toothed cats,
terror birds, and short-faced bears on a daily basis,
so protection was necessary.
One of the most alien-looking mammals on earth
is the pangolin.
They're the only mammals with scales,
but unfortunately, those scales are driving them to extinction.
Pangolins are found in Africa and Southeast Asia,
environments full of predators.
Their thick, overlapping keratin scales give them protection
without sacrificing flexibility.
When threatened, they can curl up into a ball,
hiding their face behind their thick tail.
Their scales protect them from being eaten
but also provide a secondary advantage.
They protect the scaly cuties from cuts,
which in the wild often lead to bacterial infections and death.
It's sadly ironic that their most advanced feature
has lead them to be overhunted by humans.
Their scales have been used to make badass warrior armours,
but most often they've been hunted
for use in traditional Chinese medicine.
Of the eight species,
three are critically endangered and three are endangered.
This is because over 100,000 live pangolins
are transported to China every year,
making them the most trafficked animal in the world.
Thankfully, the Chinese government
recently removed pangolin scales
from their list of permitted traditional medicines.
With added protections, their populations might recover
slightly in the next couple of decades.
Well, at this point, my friends,
I wish to make it clear that the obscenity I am talking about
were not bought on the sly from under the counter.
They can be bought openly by anyone is drug stores,
groceries, delicatessens, terminals, malt shops,
cigar stores, newsstands all over the community.
Staying in South Asia, we find the animal version of the tank.
The Indian rhinoceros.
These thick skinned chonks are surprisingly sensitive.
[male announcer] The tank, with its force and scope,
is capable of carrying on a small war all alone.
[Danielle] Their protective plates
are made of yet another material, hide.
They need it mostly to protect themselves from each other,
as rhino fights do get a bit out of hand sometimes.
Their thick hide creates large segmented plates
that protects the rhino while conserving agility.
Despite shattering the scale at three tonnes,
they can run at over 50 km/h.
The drawbacks of having a hide armour
as opposed to one made of bone or keratin
is that it's vulnerable to cuts,
infections, sunburns, and even parasites,
like leeches or ticks.
On the other hand,
the folds and warts in the armour
give them more surface area
which makes it easier to thermoregulate.
[male announcer] Extra-strength,
double protection provide a protective armour shell.
The reptile world is full of armour.
From the dinosaurs to the modern turtles,
they have a long, proud tradition
of not letting themselves be chewed easily.
Perhaps the greatest armoured beast that ever lived,
the ankylosaurus was well-equipped
to fight off T-Rex.
They were about seven-metres long
and had plates of bone lining their body
from their neck to their tail
which had a large club at the end
to hammer opponents.
The alligator snapping turtle and the mata-mata turtle
are the only living reptiles
to get even close to them in armour design.
[male announcer] Uh-oh!
The top of a cage is open, and the inmates have escaped!
Well, here's one of them.
That was a tortoise, a rather odd thing for a dog to collect,
but he did it.
[Danielle] Their shells are thick,
rigid, and pointy in some parts.
They not only make them tough to catch,
but also help them blend in with the irregular riverbeds
and ponds where they live.
If discovered, they have powerful bites
to remind you to keep your hands to yourself
or else they'll bite them off.
Their shells are made out of their ribs
which are connected by dermal bone to create a shield.
It's a strategy that's been working
for over 200 million years,
so if it ain't broke, don't fix it.
Among lizards,
the most interesting armour
belongs to the armadillo girdled lizard.
These little South African reptiles
have plates made of modified scales and dermal bone.
They also bite their tail when threatened.
This makes them larger and harder for predators to grasp.
Their main predators are mongooses,
which are unable to penetrate the armour
of a full-grown armadillo girdled lizard.
Their shield is as hard as saying their name
10 times in a row.
Go ahead, try it.
I dare you.
But in areas with fewer trees,
where they're more exposed to birds of prey,
they have evolved to have lighter armour
in order to be faster
as this gives them a better chance of survival.
Among invertebrates, armour is a lot more common.
Insects have exoskeletons, so in a way,
they're all armoured.
[male announcer] The skeleton of an insect is outside its body
and is called and exoskeleton.
Yes, this is real war.
[Danielle] But their invertebrate cousins,
the doughy-bodied molluscs, do need armour.
And they've learned that they can make them both
functional and stylish.
[male announcer] The handsome tiger cowrie builds a remarkably strong shell
and crawls slowly through the corral pools
with ponderous and vulnerability of an armoured tank.
[Danielle] There are thousands of shelled mollusc species,
from the stripped beauty of the nautilus shell
to the alien-like qualities of the giant clam
and the complex architecture of the queen conch.
Different species have built their own armour
according to their needs.
The majority of them are made out of calcium carbonate,
but the scaly-foot snail evolved to make their shells
more hardcore, literally.
These deep sea creatures use iron from their environment
to make the outer layer of their shell.
These are iron snails.
Thanos be warned.
They're the only known species to do this.
The reason why they need to make themselves ironclad
is still unclear,
but it might help them survive extreme temperatures.
And, finally, we have the cheeky animals
that learned that it might be easier
to reuse old armour than to make it.
Hermit crabs don't make their own shells,
and instead, they find used snail shells to hide in.
They have evolved to fit them almost perfectly
and will change shells as they grow.
Luckily, there's always a slightly larger crab
that is also moving into new digs.
If shells are scarce,
crabs will fight and kill each other for the rights
to empty shells.
[male announcer] Although the crab's back,
head, and nippers are heavily armour,
it has a very tender tail with a thin,
sensitive skin.
In a flash, it tucks its tender tail into safety.
Over goes the shell and away it scuttles.
[Danielle] Similarly, the coconut octopus
learned to make use of coconuts and clam shells
to make a fortress.
In some cases, they'll even grab multiple shells
with their suckers
and arrange them around their soft body
to protect themselves.
This might be one of the earliest instances
of tool use in nature.
They might be one of the smartest animals on earth.
The world of animal armour is fascinating.
There are so many types of materials,
and they're all made from pretty much the same building blocks.
From insects to rhinos,
animals are able to create armour out of the food they eat.
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So what should I talk about next?
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Thanks for watching.
Stay safe, and see ya!
[♪♪♪]
Their shield is as hard as saying their name
10 times in a row.
Armadillo...
Armadillo girdle lizard.
Hm.
Full-grown monitor lizard girdle thing.
Uh...
The armour of an armadillo griddle-- girdled lizard.
A mon-- Of a full-grown armadillo g-girdled lizard...
Argh!
Full-grown m-mm.
I can't do it.
Armadillo girdled lizard.
Why do I have such trouble with this?
Full-grown m-armadillo girdled lizard.
Full-grown armadillo girdled lizard.
I've been practicing.
Go ahead and try it. I dare you.