Now that we've had our fun clowning around at the humble armadillo's expense, it's time to get serious and talk about the role the armadillo is playing in saving human lives.
Luckily for us, most westerners think of leprosy as a disease that burdened man in biblical times. Regrettably, leprosy is still afflicting millions of people today in developing countries around the world.
Eleanor Storrs, in her article The Astonishing Armadillo, explains that the agent that causes leprosy was discovered over a hundred years ago, but it was difficult to study this agent because it couldn't be grown in a test tube. Thus research on controlling leprosy fell behind advancements on other diseases.
Unfortunately for them, armadillos are susceptible to fatal forms of leprosy, probably because they have a lower body temperature than humans. Armadillos don't get human forms of leprosy and as of the writing of Eleanor's article (published in National Geographic June 1982) Florida armadillos did not seem to have the disease.
Joshua Nixon's Armadillo Online tells us that the only times leprosy has been passed from armadillos to humans were in a few cases where somebody ate undercooked armadillo meat.
The fact that armadillos routinely have 4 identical babies has allowed researchers to do studies that show a susceptibility to leprosy is inherited.
Lepromin is a substance that is used as a diagnostic tool by doctors to predict the course of a leprosy infection in an individual human.
While this substance used to be rare, now it's known that even one seriously infected armadillo can produce enough lepromin for all the human cases in the world.
That's amazing, isn't it?
Apparently this new abundant source of lepromin has greatly accelerated research into a leprosy vaccine.
So here is another case where an animal that may have seemed insignificant to us turned out to be a valuable ally for mankind.
An Armadillo Honor For You
Now that you've completed our Amateur Expert Armadillo Training Course you may qualify for induction into The Benevolent Order Of Armadillos.
The BOA is hosted by Dilloscape a good site for your further armadillo research. Check out their Dilloscape Community where you can stay up all night long discussing armadillos with other weird and eccentric people just like you and me.
Other excellent armadillos resources used in the preparation of this article are
Armadillo Online and The Astonishing Armadillo. (Regrettably, The Astonishing Armadillo article appears to no longer be online.)
All photos were taken by Phil Tanny in the San Felasco Hammock, just outside of Gainesville Florida. The video was filmed in exotic locations around the world, that is, um, mostly in Phil's front yard.
But Wait, Stop, The Suffering Isn't Over Yet!
Now that you've carefully read (you did read carefully I hope!) this site a couple of times, it's time to address some deeply personal questions, and find out what kind of dillo you really are.
Sure, you've told your friends you're a Super Duper Dillo.
But is it really true?
Could you be a Dillo Dummy instead?
Luckily for you, this site comes with scientfic equipment which can finally resolve this troubling question once and for all.
Click here to test your dillobility, if you dare!
