Their ossified dermal plates compose a series of six to eleven movable bands covered by leathery keratinous skin, which surrounds and protects the body.
[8] Dasypus species are grey or brown in color and possess long and sharp claws for scavenging and digging burrows.
Although they have a very diverse range, armadillos are typically found near bodies of water, and their burrows are often dug into stream banks, tree stumps, or rock or brush piles.
[7][9] When threatened, armadillos run to the nearest burrow or crevice and tightly wedge themselves inside with their back alongside the wall.
Dasypus species are unable to roll into a complete ball like the Brazilian three-banded armadillo due their excessive number of dermal plates.
[4] Because they lack significant hair covering, armadillos are particularly sensitive to climate and are therefore most active during summer nights and winter days.
Due to their low fat storage, they spend most of their activity foraging for food, which primarily consists of insects, small reptiles and amphibians, and plants.
They have very poor eyesight and instead rely on their keen sense of smell and enhanced hearing to locate buried insects and detect predators.
If the water body is too large for this, Dasypus can instead gulp in air, inflating their stomachs and intestines and increasing buoyancy.
They are, though, limited by a lack of sufficient insects as a food source and their low metabolic rate, which prevents them from living in cold climates.
[10] The existence of human developments and construction has generally increased the armadillo's ability to expand by facilitating the crossing of previous obstacles.
[7] They thrive in high rainfall habitats most likely due to better soil conditions for burrowing and a higher abundance of food.
They are also known to inhabit various other environments ranging from grassland to swamp areas and are able to adapt to numerous regions as long as adequate food and water are available.
[4][18] Because of armadillos’ low body temperature, scavenging habits, and damp living environments they are susceptible to certain infections and parasites.
Juveniles lack fully developed and strengthened armor and are much more susceptible to predation, thereby having a much higher mortality rate than adults.
This is most likely due to their common response of jumping into the air when startled which causes a direct collision with a passing automobile.
[9] In order to copulate, the female has to lie on her back due to the high amount of bony armor and the ventrally located genitalia.
[4] The blastocyst is fully developed and remains healthy through oxygen and nutrients received from uterine secretions during this time.
[10] Members of Dasypus are unique among mammals in possessing the reproductive trait of monozygotic polyembryony, meaning their offspring are genetically identical due to the division of a single fertilized egg into four matching embryos.
M. leprae is unculturable on artificial media, and only after years of research was the ability to culture the bacteria on the footpads of mice discovered.
However, the development of the bacteria and study was still very limited until the successful infection of lepromatous leprosy in the nine-banded armadillo (Dasypus novemcinctus) by Kirchheimer and Storrs in 1971.
The armadillo became the only known animal other than primates to regularly develop leprosy and has since largely advanced the disease study through use of in vivo propagation of M. leprae.
Despite the discovery of additional Dasypus species capable of infection (D. septemcinctus and D. pilosus), the nine-banded armadillo remains a favored animal model due to its availability and ideal body temperatures for bacterial hosting.