good morning John after college I got a
job working all by myself in a fungicide
quality control laboratory I know it
sounds super exciting it was actually
pretty exciting though because I was the
only person there and so I managed the
lab all by myself I ordered things I
designed SOPs I did all the tests I
listened to lots of punk rock but also
it was awful because I would go to work
and I would work all day and I would not
see a single living thing that wasn't a
mold it was extremely boring and lonely
as evidenced by these pictures of me
wearing produce bags on my head I've
just gotten my first digital camera and
I was out to make some content but then
some days I did see other living things
that weren't mold because it was Florida
and I might see a black racer or a frog
or get stung by a yellow jacket and then
one day I saw outside of my window this
little group of armadillos looking real
cute and I thought I'll take my new
digital camera and I'll take a bunch of
pictures of them now we are aware these
days that you can get diseases from
animals and you can get leprosy from
armadillos the official advices do not
handle them unnecessarily and I did not
but if I wore my headphones and listen
to punk rock they would come over and
they would snuff on my head I think
because they thought maybe they used or
seven seconds was actually like a little
bug crawling around as they do use their
rabbit like ears to listen for prey good
fact actually the Aztec word for
armadillo translates to turtle rabbit I
did not get a leprosy from these
armadillos but even if I had it's fairly
treatable now so that's good also
sometimes diseases cross from animals to
humans and we hear a lot about that but
leprosy actually jumped from humans to
armadillos so this is not their fault I
took so many pictures of these
armadillos oh my god I had dad shoes
even back then armadillos are most
closely related to ant eaters and there
have been and are lots of species of
armadillos pink fairy armadillos three
banded nine banded giant armadillos and
then of course in the past there were
the glyptodont now extinct probably
because of guess who this video is about
the nine banded armadillo the only
armadillo
native to the US and this species also
lives other places in North Central and
South America but the subspecies that
lives in the US interestingly are all
very genetically similar suggesting that
only a few made it this far north before
establishing a population these
armadillos also always have litters of
identical quadruplets
so that role I was hanging out with and
yes role is the collective noun for
armadillos were probably brothers or
sisters all genetically identical other
awesome things about armadillos they
live in places where there's a lot of
water so they have two different ways of
getting across water and they can choose
which one they do they can either walk
under the water because their keratin
plates make them so heavy that they sink
or or they can inflate their digestive
systems and swim on top of the water and
they have lots of choices in their lives
for example mommy armadillos can decide
after mating whether she wants to have
those babies now or postpone it if she's
stressed out she can push it for up to
two years before she starts developing
the embryos also when they're threatened
they jump really high up in the air
which is cool strategy to scare away a
predator it's not great it's scaring
away cars which is why you might see
lots of armadillos on the side of the
road that have had bad outcomes and that
is sad but the good news is that
nine-minute armadillos are great at
surviving in the human-created landscape
even of an office park outside of
Orlando Florida they are abundant as a
species they are doing very well and I
love them and I loved going back and
looking through my old pictures from
2003 and if you are a member of the
bizarre beast pin Club yes you will be
getting an armadillo in your mailbox
sometime soon John I'll see you on
Tuesday