Armadillos.

I am not sure what I find so intriguing about armadillos. It may be that they have adapted over the millennia and are a tenacious survivor of evolutionary tensions. They also have an unusual appearance in that they are armored with flexible plates, although only one of the 23 known species is capable of rolling up like a pill bug. All the others avoid predators by “fleeing on foot” through the dense underbrush, digging down in soft earth or swimming great distances.

There is one species called the screaming hairy armadillo which squeals loudly when picked up or is otherwise disturbed. It goes without saying that Screaming Hairy Armadillos would a GREAT name for a rock band and I blame the Rock Band Naming Society for this glaring oversight.

In doing what I laughably call “research” for this blog entry, I discovered that the overlapping scales on the armadillo’s back are called “scutes”, providing yet another triple word score in Scrabble and a candidate for Best Word Ever.

Like all living things, well *things* generally, behaviors and population dynamics are governed by physics. This is not surprising because physics attempts to describe and predict the physical universe, of which armadillos are a part. I think universities the world over should offer a course of study called Armadillo Physics taught by wild-eyed scientists wearing rumpled lab coats and carrying clipboards covered with cryptic runes.

Sign me up.