The fact that we get to share the world with a creature that is appropriately called the pink fairy armadillo is one of the greatest things about living life on this planet. If you haven’t heard of them, today is about to be your lucky day. But this isn’t just about them — I think all xenarthrans deserve to have their moment.
“I’m sorry, xena-what?” Glad you asked. Let’s talk about taxonomy. Within the ranks of mammal classification, there are some groups that seem pretty familiar, like Carnivora (which includes cats, dogs, bears, otters, and seals) and Primates (which includes lemurs, monkeys, great apes, and us). Others are more surprising and include animals you totally didn’t realize were related. Xenarthra is an order of mammals that emerged in South America about 60 million years ago. Many of them live in North America now, but they only got up here about 3 million years ago, when South America and North America connected to each other. When this happened, all of the continents’ species intermixed, and North American mammal groups largely outcompeted the South American ones. Not xenarthrans, though. They made it up here.
So who are they? The living species of Xenarthra come in three different models: anteaters, armadillos, and sloths. Now, maybe you could’ve guessed anteaters and armadillos are related — they don’t look alike, but they’re both weird animals with A names, right? (They don’t have anything to do with aardvarks, though, which is a bit of a letdown.) But sloths? I never thought about them having any relatives in the animal world. They’re really doing their own thing. They’ve slept through every family reunion, so they missed out on the name alliteration. It’s okay. I forgive them. Sloths are perfect.
Without further ado, here is a very incomplete highlight reel of some of the best xenarthrans:
- Brown-throated three-toed sloth (Bradypus variegatus)
I encountered this charming cat-sized xenarthran on my trip to Costa Rica last summer. They’re one of the most photogenic creatures ever. I mean, look at them — they literally have a permanent smile on their face. I’d be smiling like that too if I’d managed to evolve an effective survival strategy that exerted so little energy. Sloths spend their lives hanging from trees, sleeping over 16 hours a day and letting moss grow on their fur (it’s giving “the lakes” by Taylor Swift). They pretty much spend their whole lives dangling from the same few branches, except when they climb down to the forest floor once a week for bathroom breaks. They eat leaves and twigs and literally take weeks to digest them. Everything in a sloth’s life is wonderfully slow-paced, and naming one of the seven deadly sins after them was clearly just jealousy on humanity’s part.
Three-toed Sloth: The Slowest Mammal On Earth | Nature on PBS
- Giant anteater (Myrmecophaga tridactyla)
You may recognize anteaters for those long snouts that allow them to stick their nose in everything (maybe you have such a figure in your own life). But you might not know, in the case of the giant anteater, just how insanely huge these guys can get. Like, 6 to 8 feet long. Their tongue alone can be up to 2 feet long. As their name suggests, these creatures make a career out of going Godzilla on anthills and termite mounds. They rip into these structures with their long claws and stick their faces in to lap up unheeding insect citizens with their giant sticky tongues. Anteaters actually walk on their knuckles to protect their super-long claws from getting worn out on the ground. Also, baby giant anteaters spend their first year of life riding on their mother’s back, which is exactly as adorable as it sounds.
First Look at our Baby Anteater
- Screaming hairy armadillo (Chaetophractus vellerosus)
I’ll be honest, I just learned about this species, but as soon as I saw their name on Wikipedia, I knew these armadillos and I shared a real connection. Screaming hairy armadillos live in the Monte Desert of South America, where they eat plants, insects, lizards, and other small critters they can catch. They sleep in burrows they dig in the dry, sandy soil. The species is named for the loud squealing noise they make when threatened and their unusually fuzzy little bodies. They are also noteworthy for being weird little freaks. They’re the only species of armadillo that’s been observed digging under and into animal carcasses to get access to that prime insect buffet. Okay, now I’m not sure how I feel about our deep connection.
Wild Wednesday: Screaming hairy armadillo
- Northern tamandua (Tamandua mexicana)
These dudes are truly masters of style. In forests from Mexico to Peru, this anteater takes a much more tree-focused approach to life than its giant ground-based cousins. They get to be 3 or 4 feet long, and almost half of that length is just the tail. Their tail isn’t bushy, but rather, it’s hairless like a rat’s and prehensile like a monkey’s. Now, to some people, this might sound more offputting than stylish, but let me direct you to their other best feature. You’ll notice they have a dapper black or dark brown vest featured on their otherwise pale coat. I mean, how many animals can pull off something like that? Their cousin, the southern tamandua, sometimes has the vest too, but not always. I suppose down in the Southern Hemisphere, penguins probably have the monopoly on looking like they’re wearing fun human clothes.
Northern Tamandua in Costa Rica
- Hoffman’s two-toed sloth (Choloepus hoffmanni)
I saw one of these sloths in Costa Rica, too — it’s the only other sloth species found in that country. Unlike the perpetually smiley three-toed sloths, the two-toed sloth has a distinctly piglike snout that makes their mouth less noticeable. They’re still super cute in their own way, though. They are a bit bigger than three-toed sloths, measuring 21 to 28 inches head to tail and weighing in at 10 to 20 pounds. Surprisingly enough, two-toed sloths are pregnant for even longer than humans — their average gestation period is around a year, and they just have one baby at a time. By comparison, three-toed sloth pregnancies only take about six months, but that’s still a surprisingly long time for such a small animal. Sloths really are masters at the art of taking things slow.
Meet Aysan, Female Hoffmann’s Two-Toed Sloth
- Pink fairy armadillo (Chlamyphorus truncatus)
And now, the moment we’ve all been waiting for: the pink fairy armadillo. My beloved. The smallest extant armadillo species, found in central Argentina. They are literally 6 inches long and weigh less than 5 ounces. And yeah, they really are pink — on their scaly backs, at least; their soft furry undersides are white. They look like a cross between a shrimp and a mouse. Very little is known about them, because they’re elusive, nocturnal burrowers, and they’re extremely hard to keep alive in captivity. For some reason, almost all pink fairy armadillos that have been removed from the wild have died within a few days. I totally get it. The urge to keep these animals in our houses might prove too strong otherwise. Just look at them. Look at them. Marvelous.
Pink Fairy Armadillos are Pint Sized Tanks
- Honorable mentions: Glyptodontinae and Megatherium
We must also take a moment to honor those fallen xenarthrans of past ages that are no longer with us. Glyptodonts were huge armadillos, and I mean huge. Some species were the size of cars and could weigh up to 2 tons. They had domed, scaly bodies and long, spiky tails, sort of like the dinosaur Ankylosaurus if you’re familiar. Imagine putting a saddle on one of these bad boys. Maybe someone has tried — they only went extinct around 11,000 years ago, not long after the first humans migrated into their native South America. Unfortunately, there was probably some correlation between the two events. As sad as it is that they aren’t around anymore, I can understand why people hunted them — those giant fortress-like shells would’ve made perfect little shelters.
Megatheres were giant ground sloths that inhabited South America, and they went extinct around the same time, likely for the same reasons. It’s a shame people didn’t have the foresight to keep them around, because these sloths dug some really impressive burrows. I like to think they could be excavating our subway tunnels today if we’d managed to somehow domesticate them. But sadly, the story of awesome Pleistocene giants that went extinct around 10,000 years ago is all too common a tale. When I say I was born in the wrong generation, I mean I wish I could have met the prehistoric megafauna. (Then again, some scientists are working on “de-extinction” efforts that could theoretically come to fruition in our lifetimes… because Jurassic Park taught us nothing.)
Of course, we still have megafauna species living today — mainly in Africa, elephants and rhinos and those sorts of icons — and now we’re causing a lot of those to become endangered, too. I really wish it was easier to talk about the environment without talking about human-caused problems. We really share this world with species like the pink fairy armadillo and the glass frog and take it for granted too often. Don’t let yourself forget how cool it is to live on this earth.
Some sources/further reading:
Meet the pink fairy armadillo | Magazine Articles | WWF
Screaming hairy armadillo | Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute
ADW: Hoffman’s two-toed sloth (Choloepus hoffmanni): INFORMATION
Brown-Throated Three-Toed Sloth | Rainforest Alliance
Giant anteater | Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute