GIANT SLOTHS AND ARMADILLOS 293 



Armadillos belong, with sloths and ant-eaters, to the same 

 family of so-called toothless animals (edentata) with no front 

 teeth, though one or two forms really are toothless. Those of 

 the present day have their bony armour divided up into a series 

 of bands, so that they can roll themselves up, more or less, into 

 balls. They burrow under the ground, where they get their food 

 to a certain extent, and live a safe life, protected by their casque 

 of mail. Their only enemies seem to be the monkeys, and one 

 of the tricks of the young monkeys in the American forests is, 

 when they find an armadillo away from home, to pull its tail 

 unmercifully, and try to drag it about. Snakes cannot hurt them. 

 Mr. W. H. Hudson, in his most interesting book, A Naturalist in 

 La Plata, narrates how he watched an armadillo kill a snake and 

 then devour it. 



If we examine the anatomy of the armadillo, we shall find that 

 its bones greatly resemble those of the sloth, but still there are a 

 few differences. It is a burrowing animal, and therefore requires 

 great power of scratching and tearing the ground. Why the 

 colossal forms of armadillo should have become extinct and only 

 small ones survived to the present time, is one of the many and 

 perplexing problems presented by the study of extinct animals. 

 One would have thought from its size and strength that the 

 Glyptodon had been built, like Eome, for eternity. 1 



1 The reader who is interested in evolution is strongly recommended to read 

 the very interesting and suggestive address of Dr. A. Smith Woodward, F.B.S., 

 to the Geological section of the British Association, 1909 (Winnipeg Meeting). 

 In this paper the writer speaks of the symptoms of old age in races. One of 

 these is loss of teeth, shown in tortoises, birds, monotreme mammals of 

 Australia, and in the Ichthyosaurs. Another is degeneration into eel-like 

 forms, and another is a superfluity of dead matter in the shape of spines or 

 bosses, armour plate, and big horns, like those of the Irish deer (Cervus 

 giganteus). 



