RELATIONSHIPS OF EDENTATES 
THE ARMADILLO 
The “little knight in armour” of South America, 
and of that continent only, is perhaps about as unlike 
the “ dreaming sloth of pallid hue” of the same con- 
tinent as any two beasts can well be, that are admittedly 
both mammals. And yet, while some of the other types 
—the Manis and the Orycteropus—which are by some 
placed in the same order, that of Edentates, are really 
unlike the armadillo, there are numerous facts in the 
structure of the sloth which show it to be akin. In no 
other part of the world than in America are there, or 
have there been ever, so far as our knowledge enables us 
to state, animals belonging to these three types, the 
sloths, armadillos and anteaters. The unique structural 
peculiarity which they share is that the vertebre of the 
back are fastened together successively by joints addi- 
tional to those which exist in other mammals. It is 
curious that the opinion of the zoologist is reinforced by 
that of a practical hunter, who thought of a rare kind of 
armadillo, remarkable for possessing its bony skin plates 
only along the side and not on the back, that it was an 
hybrid between the armadillo and the ant-bear. Funda- 
mentally related though the armadillo and the Myrmeco- 
phaga are, they are obviously most diverse in external 
form and feature. The immovable stolidity of the sloth 
and its comical face, the stately gait of the ant-eater and 
its huge bushy tail, contrast with the cheerful pattering 
waddle of the armadillo, sheathed in its thick armour. 
The armadillo—or, rather, the armadillos, for there are 
at least six distinct genera, many of which contain several 
species—has the unique peculiarity among mammals 
both living and extinct (with the single exception of 
certain armoured whales of great antiquity) of possessing 
a defensive armature composed of bony plates imbedded 
in the skin. But these bony plates do not make it a 
tortoise any more than the scales of the Manis make it a 
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