THE GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION OF MAMMALS 



189 



hardly larger than a rat, is exclusively arboreal and has a pre- 

 hensile tail, like so many other South American mammals. 

 Sloths and anteaters are forest animals and are not found west 

 of the Andes or south of Paraguay. 



The third existing suborder of edentates is that of the arma- 

 dillos (Dasypoda), which have a very complete armour of bony 

 scutes, ossifications in the skin, covered with scales of horn. 

 They are all more or less burrowers in habit and omnivorous 



Fig. 111. — Six-banded Armadillo {Dasypus sexcinclus). 

 N.Y. Zoolog. Soc. 



■By permission of the 



in diet, eating roots, insects, worms, etc. ; the extraordinary 

 rapidity with which they burrow into the ground is almost 

 their only way of escape from pursuit, but in one genus, Toly- 

 peutes, the animal can roll itself into a ball, completely pro- 

 tected by mail all around. The armadillos are much more 

 varied than the anteaters or sloths and have a wider geo- 

 graphical range, extending from Texas to Patagonia. The 

 head, which is long-snouted, is protected by a shield made up 

 of numerous horn-covered plates of bone, and the tail is encased 

 in a tubular sheath of more or less regular rings, each ring 

 of bony plates and horny scales. The body-shield, or cara- 

 pace, which covers the back and sides, consists of an anterior 

 and posterior buckler, in which the plates are immovably 



