Word: armadillos
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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Disgusting, however, was the food they were obliged to eat when their civilized provender gave out. Edible berries abounded, but often resembled poisonous kinds. They gingerly tried armadillo meat, scooping the flesh from the bowl-like shells. It had a faint herby taste. In extremity they killed small monkeys, skinned them, put the little, human-like heads out of nauseating sight, gutted and boiled the creatures. Monkey meat they found pallid, tasteless. Spices thrown into the soup pots made the meat palatable...
...lower animals rarely indulge in this form of biological sport, with the exception of the Texas armadillo* which reproduces regularly in this way. It bears four young of the same sex, having a common set of embryonic membranes, strikingly similar in general configuration, all coming from a single egg. Thus they parallel as quadruplets the conditions of human identical twins. Exactly what causes the egg to divide is not definitely known. Dr. Horatio H. Newman, zoologist at the University of Chicago, has patiently pursued simpler species in the hope of finding a clue. After sacrificing several starfish he has shown...
...Texas armadillo-Dasypus novemcinctus texanus...
...late generation which it typifies.'" . Rudyard Kipling, poet-story-teller: "My wife and I, aged 61, arrived last week in Rio de Janeiro. It became known that a Brazilian admirer, conscious of my flair for describing animals (both domestic and wild) had sent to my hotel an armadillo, a creature for whose origin I facetiously accounted in my Just So story about the porcupine and the tortoise. I kept the gift one day, then I returned it explaining: 'Hotel-life is too terrible a fate for an armadillo...
...mail-clad mammal, order Edentata, family Dasypodidae, native to Central and South American plains and forests. The largest species reaches one yard in length. Nocturnal, omnivorous, armadillos do not fight but burrow rapidly or roll up into bony balls when attacked. Armadillos lately came to fame in the U. S., when one was presented to President Coolidge. The little known fact then came to light that the armadillo has young in litters of four, all of the same sex, be it male or female...