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Updated: June 16, 2025
To the insatiable bloody appetite of this creature nothing comes amiss; he takes the male ostrich by surprise, and slays that wariest of wild things on his nest; He captures little birds with the dexterity of a cat, and hunts for diurnal armadillos; he comes unawares upon the deer and huanaco, and, springing like lightning on them, dislocates their necks before their bodies touch the earth.
Similarly in South America, and nowhere else, are found sloths and armadillos, and in that same part of the world have been discovered bones of animals different indeed from existing sloths and armadillos, but yet much more nearly related to them than to any other kinds whatever. Such coincidences between the existing and antecedent geographical distribution of forms are numerous.
Not a bit of carcass was there; there were bones clean bones and dry hard skin, but no flesh, not an atom of flesh! "Tatou-poyou!" quietly remarked Guapo. "What!" said Don Pablo, "an armadillo, you think?" recognising, in Guapo's words, the Indian name for one of the large species of armadillos. "Yes," replied Guapo. "All eaten by the tatou-poyou. See! there's his hole."
"The base is comfortable, and we only work a two-hour shift out of each ten. We've had a plague of silly dillies recently. They got into one man's suit while we were working, but mostly they're just a nuisance." Rip had heard of the creatures. They were like Earth armadillos, except that they were silicon animals and not carbon like those of Earth.
The lot of the armadillos was not vastly different. Digging for grubs in the wet mould, they were oblivious to their surroundings for with their heads hidden from view they felt a fanciful security from outward aggression.
This was evident, as the hollow skeleton was quite dry, and had evidently been empty for a good while. Don Pablo was pleased at this incident, as it gave him an opportunity of verifying a curious habit of the armadillos.
A blow on its head from Guapo made all right, and it was afterwards carried safely to the house, and "roasted in the shell." That was a great day among the "armadillos." During the whole summer, Don Pablo, Guapo, and Leon, continued bark-gathering. Every day they went out into the woods, excepting Sunday of course.
The tracks across it are marked by the whitened skeletons of the horses and bullocks which have succumbed to the fatigues of the journey, or the want of water, and have been picked clean by the carranchas, and others of the vulture tribe, or by the active teeth of the voracious little armadillos, which clear away the refuse of the feast left by their feathered companions.
During the voyage of the Beagle I had been deeply impressed by discovering in the Pampean formation great fossil animals covered with armour like that on the existing armadillos; secondly, by the manner in which closely allied animals replace one another in proceeding southwards over the continent; and, thirdly, by the South American character of most of the productions of the Galapagos Archipelago, and more especially by the manner in which these differ slightly on each island of the group, none of these islands appearing to be very ancient in a geological sense.
It burrows, digs open the ant-hills by night, projects a long viscous tongue among the insects, and devours them with avidity. When suddenly overtaken, and out of reach of its underground retreat, it "clews" up like the hedgehog, and some species of the South American armadillos to which last animal it bears a considerable resemblance on account of its scaly coat of mail.
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