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Intrusive Frogeater Destroys Lone Star's State Mammal: The Nine-Banded Dillo, Leaving None Remaining in Texas!
No one asked any furrin Frenchy's opinion on armadillos—but somehow one thought he should shove his Gallic nose in and answer a question no True Texan ever had!
The result has been the fragmentation of the range of what was until now the most widespread of all armadillo species—the nine-banded armadillo—leaving *none at all* here in Texas, where it is our State (Small) Mammal.
The only remaining nine-banded armadillos (Dasypus novemcinctus) are now to be found somewhere in South America!?! All wild and free nine-banded armadillos in The Lone Star have been replaced by Dasypus mexicanus—the Mexican armadillo!
In news that’s likely to be awkward for whoever decided that the nine-banded armadillo should be the state small animal of Texas, scientists have discovered that it’s actually four different species – and the only one that’s kept the name doesn’t even live in the state.
At least until now, nine-banded armadillos were considered to be the most widespread of all the armadillo species, with a range that saw them all the way from Argentina up into the center of the US.
That’s a pretty impressive range – but one that had doubt cast upon it when some scientists began to propose that the nine-banded armadillo was in fact a complex of species.
One of those scientists was Frédéric Delsuc, a research director at the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) in France, who started to suspect a split within the nine-banded species back in the late 1990s, but didn’t have enough evidence from specimens across the armadillo’s range to back it up...
https://www.iflscience.com/turns-out-texas-state-small-mammal-is-actually-4-different-species-74859
At least until now, nine-banded armadillos were considered to be the most widespread of all the armadillo species, with a range that saw them all the way from Argentina up into the center of the US.
That’s a pretty impressive range – but one that had doubt cast upon it when some scientists began to propose that the nine-banded armadillo was in fact a complex of species.
One of those scientists was Frédéric Delsuc, a research director at the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) in France, who started to suspect a split within the nine-banded species back in the late 1990s, but didn’t have enough evidence from specimens across the armadillo’s range to back it up...
https://www.iflscience.com/turns-out-texas-state-small-mammal-is-actually-4-different-species-74859
This report opens with wondering how the nine-banded armadillo became the Texas State Mammal. Well, simple: in 1995 elementary school children voted for it to be!
Wellsomeever, the vote for State Mammal it ended in a plumb dead heat between the Dillo and the Longhorn.
In one of the last reasonable actions of a Texas State Legislature a law was passed giving Texas *two* State Mammals: Small (the nine-banded dillo) and Large (the longhorn).
Since it is awkward, in the current political climate, for our State Mammal to be Mexican, now that the nine-banded dillo has been replaced apparently the jackalope has been returning to its historic range and so I propose that the jackalope be the new Texas State Small Mammal.
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