Arkansas Blog

Armadillos have been in northern Arkansas for at least two decades.

Yes, they even trucked across the Ozark Mountains to Fayette'nam several years ago.

Yep. They've been up here on the Missouri border a long time. We always know it's summer here when the belly-up armadillos start appearing on the road sides. Between here and Hardy I've seen as many as 12 dead armadillos in one 30-minute drive.

Armadillos started showing up on Champagnolle Road in Union County about 1950, maybe a little earlier.

It;s all global warmings fault tha tthey are in Northern Arkansas. They have not been here for years, they just showed up here yesterday thanks to bush and his greedy global warming ways.

You neo-cons need to stop trying to pretend that global warming is not happening because it is.

Oh boy! 'Possum on the half shell! Mmmm.

Armadillos. Been in west central Arkansas in abundance all my life. 30 years.

Hamburg continues to celebrate their Armadillo Festival each year the first week-end in May as they have for better than 30 years.

ARKBLOG: It's about 300 miles from Hamburg to Blytheville.

Those little critters have come from Mexico...not one of them can speak English and none of em have a green card. I say we round them all up and send em back. Where is Jim Holt when we need him.

Are you serious? They've been in Arkansas all of my life. Tons of them.

You yankees are too funny.

Armadillos are not originally native to Arkansas, but have moved into the state within the last 80 years or so. According to the excellent Arkansas Mammals by Sealander and Heidt, the first record of armadillos in Arkansas was in 1920, and by the 1940s, they were well-established across the western and southwestern portions of the state. I grew up in Paron, and remember the to-do when some high-school kid dragged up the first armadillo anyone around there had seen, sometime in the mid-1960s. Armadillos are now common across the entire state, and are regularly seen as far north as Nebraska. Their expansion was not originally due to global warming, but they are limited by temperature, so that with higher temperatures, our friends in the Dakotas and Michigan may soon be able to enjoy possum-on-the-half shell.

By the way, unless I'm completely off base, the picture supplied by the Times is not that of a nine-banded armadillo (Dasypus novemcinctus) but appears to be a hairy armadillo (Chaetophractus villosus) which lives in Paraguay and Bolivia. Are they showing up in Arkansas? 'Cause that would be something....

ARKBLOG: We're not armadillo experts, so apologies for the photo.

But thank you for making our main point better than we could. The point is that armadillos have been making their way north to places that used to be too cold for them.

A lot of animals are moving north--cardinals and opossums come immediately to mind. Plus, when irresponsible pet owners release their exotic animals into the wild, they often survive and thrive today, where temperatures just 30 years ago would have kept them from living. There's a population of monk parakeets living in Chicago, and another in Connecticut. These are birds that are native to Brazil. Nile monitors roam the canals of Miami and Tampa. It's only a matter of time before we have vampire bats bothering our cattle--and us.

But, hey, don't worry about global warming--there's no proof that it's real....

Warick, many animals move into other areas over time. It has nothing to do with global warming. Fireants are another example. Killer bees are too.

Did you live here in the early 80's when we'd go months with 100 degrees plus temps?

I'm not saying global warming doesn't exist because it does. These are just not a result of it.

ARKBLOG: Maybe you're right that the armadillo migration isn't the result of global warming. I'm certainly not knowledgeable enough on the subject to say for sure.

But other people -- like the author of the article we linked to -- seem to think there is a connection. And we need to keep debating and investigating this.

Since 1980, the nine-banded armadillo has made itself at home in Missouri, moving northward to and even across the Missouri River, according to a 1994 report by Kimberley Lippert Mackey and Paul T. Schell, then graduate students at Southwest Missouri State University, Springfield. Survey respondents in areas around Cassville, Roaring River State Park and West Plains reported the most sightings. (Conservationist readers participated in the survey.)

Armadillo, meaning "little armored one," was the name the Spanish gave shell-wearing mammals they encountered in the New World. Armadillos exist only in the Americas, with South America home to all 20 species. Two of those, the nine-banded and the northern naked-tail armadillo, also live in Central America and Mexico.

Only the nine-banded migrated into this country. First recorded in Texas in 1849, it expanded its range north and east, at times aided by pranksters and animal dealers. In Florida, releases from a zoo in 1924 and a circus truck in 1936 started another migrating population. Now the northern edge of armadillo territory runs through Kansas, Missouri, Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina. Though this expansion has taken almost 150 years, that's fast for a mammal.

It isn't the first armadillo to live here. A similar but larger armadillo lived in what is now Missouri during the Pleistocene (a geologic epoch). It disappeared at the end of the last ice age.

http://www.mdc.mo.gov/conmag/1997/03/30.htm

They migrated south into Florida too. Would that be proof of global cooling?

There is global warming but this has nothing to do with it.

Well, either way it sure is friggin' hot today...

EXPANDING ARMADILLOS

The nine-banded is still on the move. Theoretically, people on Cape Cod eventually could be in for a little armored surprise.

How far can armadillos go?

The limits probably will be determined by precipitation and winter weather, according to a paper in the Journal of Biogeography by James F. Taulman, Ph.D. graduate student at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, and Dr. Lynn W. Robbins, professor of biology, Southwest Missouri State University.

The armadillo's main food source, invertebrates, depends on moisture in the soil. The species' westward trek is expected to halt where precipitation drops below 38 cm (about 15 inches) per year, along the western borders of Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas.

Northward, precipitation is adequate, but winters are a problem. Armadillos don't hibernate and must eat, but ice and snow prevent digging. At Drury Mincy, after a week with snow on the ground, researchers found eight dead armadillos. Other armadillos, perhaps with more body fat, survived.

Taking into account winter temperatures and numbers of "freeze days," Taulman and Robbins predict armadillos could range into southern areas of Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts. The West Coast and several other western areas also are suitable for armadillos, should humans introduce the species there.

Although rivers define some present boundaries of the U.S. range, they aren't necessarily road blocks. Armadillos somehow crossed the Rio Grande and the Mississippi, and the SMSU survey revealed a few sightings on the north side of the Missouri.

Even so, the nine-banded's current range in Missouri is at its predicted northern limit, essentially the Missouri River. But Robbins cautions, "We're making an educated guess, and each time somebody has guessed, the armadillos kept moving north." The previous prediction set the limit in central Arkansas, "and they just plowed right on past that."

Robbins expects Missouri's armadillo population to increase and "fill in the gaps" in its range except for the bootheel, because of lack of burrow sites above the water table.

He thinks they won't do as well in broad expanses of farmland as they will where woods are available. Armadillos like the softer earth of fields and lawns, but when that open ground freezes, they head for the woods and feed under the leaf litter, where soil doesn't freeze as readily.

And I thought only Republicans ignored facts?

They're called arkansas compasses. You carry them into the woods with you and if you get lost, you let them go. Just follow the little guy and he will lead you to the nearest highway.

"Well, either way it sure is friggin' hot today..."

Yep, but not near as hot as the summers of my childhood. Does that prove global cooling? Global warming is real, but at this point it's not having the effects some of you are claiming. The polar ice is indeed melting, but it hasn't caused noticable changes here yet.

Global warming is a fact. On average the global temperature is increasing gradually. This will cause climate changes, but not all places will be hotter. Some areas will become colder as a result of global warming. Some dry places will become wet and some wet places will become dry.

I don't discount global warming but I saw my first armadillo on the hoof on Markham Hill when I was a student at Fayetteville in the 1960s.

People who say "Global warming is a myth because it was hotter this time last year," are like those who believe no wars exist because they don't see it in their front lawn each day.

We have just begun to understand the migratory patterns that have been affected by our warming planet. It is not a myth that the polar ice caps continue to melt at an alarming rate. A global rise of ocean water by just one tenth of an inch would disrupt weather patterns and temperatures in ways we cannot fathom.

It is human arrogance that perpetuates these problems. This is one issue on which evangelical Christians and atheists should see eye-to-eye. We have but one planet. Treating it with such apathy is an afront to any god and science both.

How can there still be so many armadillos when so many get hit by cars?

Every armidello birth is quads (4). The original egg splits twice before the development starts.You are going to have to hit so many more.

Of course, if the armadillo didn't jump when surprised by a car, the car would just drive over them,or at the orse.,just roll them over. My grand-daughters and I have game of sneaking up on one that is grazing in our front yard and drop a pebble on its back. Amazing that they can jump and change direction at the same time.

Don't armadillos carry the virus for leprosy?

The problem is definitely environmental but only margnally, if that, connected to global warming. Rather, what is at work is another work of man -- habitat destruction.

More breaking news from the blog -- Women Gain Right to Vote; Prohibition Repealed; U.S. Puts Men on the Moon; Nixon Resigns

Don't armadillos carry the virus for leprosy?<<

Yes they do. They are the only other mammal besides humans to carry the disease.

Global warming does exist, the man question that needs to be addressed is, is it our fault or are we just on the cusp of normal longterm cycle.

I would hazard a guess that we have been keeping accurate weather tabs for oh maybe 100 years or so.

And yet the earth is billions of years old.

We went through ice ages, and warming trends throughout the history of the world.

There is much debate about what causes global warming and what does not and we might one day find the answer.

And contrary to what Al Gore says, I do not think it is all our fault.

There is no debate among serious scientists. The 5% of scientists who aren't warning about global warming are either just being typical argumentative scientists or making money from big oil and government.

And Gore didn't say it was all our fault. But, yes, any countermeaures are going to be up to us.

Ignoring the threat of global warming is like living in New Orleans and ignoring the threat of those levees breaking. Sure, there's only a certain probabilty the shit is really going to hit the fan, but are you willing to run the risk?

And the Repubs who scream the loudest about personal responsibility are typically blaming this all on the sun, or the earth, or the starts, or Clinton, or someone, anyone, rather than all of us polluting Americans.

"Armadillos in Blytheville?"

Jews in Arkansas?

Roland,

Global warming is happening, the earth goes through cycles sometimes it warms sometimes it cools.

Do you remember the 1970's? Back then the scienteists where telling us to brace for a unending winter. It never happened.

They also claimed we were running out of forest lands. IN fact we have more now then at any other time in the history of the country.

They also went on and on about how dangerous nuke power was, and how it would destroy the world. Once again they were crying wolf.

30 years later global warming is the cause du jour. And I bet 30 years from now it will be forgotten for something else.

Yes we seem to be in a warming cycle, and we will go through one again. But the end is not near and the sky is not falling.

I would hazard a guess that we have been keeping accurate weather tabs for oh maybe 100 years or so.

Right. And it's impossible to tell anything that happened before we kept records. For the same reason, we can only be sure that the sun has been shining for the last 10,000 years or so, because that's when writing was invented. Also, previous to the invention of language, there's a pretty good chance that rain fell up, and the sky was pink.

Seriously, we are able to get pretty accurate details about what weather patterns were like going back tens of thousands of years by looking at cores drilled from ice caps, contents of packrat middens, stuff that's been embedded in tree sap, and various other sources. Al Gore's not Chicken Little--but if you continue to bury your head in the sand about global warming, the sky's going to fall....

The scare about global cooling was always the same: unprecedented low temperatures; the coldest weather recorded; unusual floods and storms; a rapid shift in the world's climate towards an icy apocalypse.
But now, the scare is about global warming. To convert from the first scare to the second, all you have to do is substitute "the coldest weather recorded" with "the warmest weather recorded". Replace the icicles hanging from oranges in California with melting glaciers on Mt Everest, and the shivering armadillos with sweltering polar bears. We were going to freeze but now we are going to fry.

What facts have emerged to make this dramatic reversal? Well, none really. The most reliable measurements show no change whatsoever in global temperatures in the past 20 years. What has changed is the perception that global warming makes a better scare than the coming ice age.

The basis for most of these changes in tempertaure are based on city readings, not atmosphric readings which are much more accurate and are not effect by such things are radiant heating (if you don't know about this, stand in the middle of downtown at night and then drive 10 minutes outside of town and stand, which is cooler? )

A good environmental scare needs two ingredients. The first is impending catastrophe. The second is a suitable culprit to blame.

Gee, Goodgrief. I guess you have a Ph.D. in meteorology, or physics or something? You seem to be getting some really good "facts" to which nobody else, including every working scientist on the planet, has access. What, praytell, is motivating all these scientists to make up their horrible lies about global warming? Are they somehow getting rich off it?

You should bear in mind that Rush Limbaugh is not a science show, and Sean Hannity is not a scientist.

Warwick, you have reached rock bottom. Good Grief - you libs are desperate. I can't stop laughing. I don't know if global warming is real or not, but I know that armadillos' in AR is not evidence of anything except that armadillo's continue to be in AR.

I am 45, from central AR and have been running over Armadillo's all my life.

The facts I have are available to everyone, you would probably be surprised that I voted for Gore.

Look back in at some 1970's Time Magazine stories, our look in some 1970's nature magazines. You will see that it is there.

As far as my information, a little basic understanding of weather and a little research would help you greatly.

As is the usual problem on boards like these is at that as soon as you disagree to with someone you are labled a right winger.

Here is a newsflash, not all democrats/liberals think the same. Not all of us blindly follow the party line and propaganda but do some due diligence on our own instead of having our "opinions" spoon fed to us by others.

Keep listening to others and not bothering to do any of your own research. You should also look at articles and treatises that do not agree with your position before to give you a broader understanding of the issue.

There are two sides to every story and if you only look at one then you are truly as ignorant as you appear.

* Of course, if the armadillo didn't jump when surprised by a car, the car would just drive over them,or at the orse.,just roll them over. *

The best documentation of car vs. armadillo is Robert Earl Keen's classic, "The Armadillo Jackal," about a Texas boy who hunts armadillos with his car because "They pay $2.50 down in Hallettsville" for the "walkin' belts and neckties."

He says "they take 'em frozen down in Hallettsville; they don't take 'em alive."

Divine retribution intervenes when The Jackal tries to hit two 'dillers at once as the pair waddles down the center line and winds up dead underneath a bridge when he flips his car.

Really? You've done some research of your own? So you are a meteorologist?

When you spew out "information" that's only accepted by right-wing nut cases, then you have to expect to be labelled a right-winger. I spend much of my time reading scientific journals. Real scientific journals--not Time or National Review. Is that where you're getting the "data" that you're analyzing? Or, as I suspect, are you getting it from talk radio and Michael Crichton novels?

Guess what, Sparky? In the journals I read, they talk about rising temperatures, and changing oceanic patterns, and melting ice caps, and shattered migration patterns, and dozens of other effects that are happening right now--not 50 years from now.

I know in your world that scientists are too stupid to take into account different points of data collection, and don't know the difference between atmospheric and earth-bound temperature reading, but in the real world--the one I live in--it turns out that scientists are pretty smart, and understand how to interpret data, and also understand when they aren't able to take everything into account.

You're right. There are two sides to every story. In this case, there's a right one and a wrong one. It turns out that now even George F&*!ing Bush understands that global warming is a real threat and that something needs to be done about it.

Arch-

You remind me of the schoolyard bully, when confronted you turn tail and run and refuse to do anything but try and yell louder and be more insulting without offering anything of substance.

The example of TIme and Nature were to give you a reference point of where these stories of the coming ice age could be found. I nowhere said they were the end all be all source.

Trying picking up a copy of Aerobiologia or Climate Dynamics before you want to engage me on this subject again.

You call names and categorize people because you don't have any other facts on your side. I have never listened to Rush Limbaugh or watched Fox News (don't even have cable). I prefer to spend my time in other pursuits.

Once again you show your ignorance. I have acknowledged that there exist different analysis and views on global warming. You however can only see two yours (which you categorize as the correct view) and others (which you categorize as wrong).

Now to lower myself to your level.....Why don't you try getting your data from someplace other than Highlights or Scholastic News, your understanding of the issue is about on par with a 2nd grader (which is exactly how you act).

As a transplanted yankee I was told armadillos are born dead on the side of the road. How do you go about seeing a live one?

"Amazing that they can jump and change direction at the same time."

A friend and I saw one stand up on its hind legs to look around and eat like a squirrel a couple of years ago. Neither of us realized they could do that. Friend and I no doubt looked like total idiots following it around hoping it would do that again so we could get a picture.
Kinda like the time we oohed and aahed at the Roadrunner mooching at a convenience store in Heber Springs a few years ago. Wonder how far north they are now.

hey arch,

meteorologist don't study climate change, dumb ass. Climatologist do. Oh crap..... there's an armadillo chewin' on my shoe.

There use to be a place in Springdale that was called the "Armadillo Grille". No lie.

It was on sunset just off 540. Its not there anymore. I guess they took off north as well.

Tell Warwick that armadillos were already so common in central Arkansas 25
years ago that the Extension Service put out a bulletin on how to exterminate them. It recommended putting a flexible hose on your car exhaust and putting the other end into their burrows and asphyxiating them.

Bob Lancaster wrote a column about this for the Arkansas Times. He thought this was inhospitable and recommended instead enactment of a Jim
Holt-style anti-armadillo immigration policy that would have had us round
them up, give each one of them an Arkansas Traveler certificate, and then
send them back to the Great Southwest. Either that, or just shoot them.

It's one thing to find armadillos--after all, we're not that far from Texas. What caught me unawares last summer was seeing a couple of roadrunners in my back yard, far from New Mexico. I checked with the folks at Wild Birds Unlimited and they confirmed that they're not that uncommon up here. Heber Springs? Heck, they'll be in Chicago next...

Try getting them to admit that this piece was a bad idea is like trying to get DBI to make a coherent statement.

They won't own up to the fact that they were trying to be alarmist and it backfired.

Dogotta-nice call on Arch, I love it went some of these smartasses get called out for the phonies they are.

I enjoy reading random stories from time to time...makes for great conversation pieces. Global warming is a concern we need to take seriously. I wish An Inconvenient Truth would've been shown when it opened as opposed to waiting until Market Street Cinema will show it. If it takes Arkansas to relate to armadillos then so be it.

This blog is so over if this is the only subject you could come up with ... Armadillos...
come on Brantley.....give us something to argue about.....we can't blast the poor liberals with a subject that resembles themselves...

When my Texan brother sees an armadillo walking upright he says "Look, an upside-down armadillo!"

Goodgrief,
What exactly of "substance" have you contributed to this discussion? Other than to say that dire warnings from the 70s were wrong, what then? "Look at both sides," you say.

Like I said, I read journals every day, and I never see an article which says that results that they have obtained are not consistent with global warming. Sometimes there are results that are not caused by global climate change, but never are there any that disprove the idea. Never. Of course, one article that suggests that global warming is disrupting duck migration doesn't prove global warming is a problem. And an article that demonstrates unprecedented loss of polar ice caps doesn't prove global warming is a problem. And another article that documents huge penguin die-offs doesn't prove global warming is a problem. But eventually, any reasonable person is going to put 2 and 2 and 2 together, and start worrying.

So, if you really want to contribute something, please tell me which of those journals you mentioned has an article which states that we shouldn't be worrying about global climate change?

And yes. Sometimes there's a right and wrong analysis. And this is one of those times. I won't apologize for knowing what I'm talking about.

Armidillos migrating northward and Republicans migrating soughward. All started about the same time. Any connection, DBI?

Arch-

You can worry all you want about whatever you want. I for one have much better things to do than worry about propoganda that is preached as fact. The bottom line is we are in a warming trend, the same type of trend that has happened thousands of times before. 30 years ago we were in a cooling trend, just like has happened many times before.

The problem we have is that people want to use 100 years worth of records and try and forecast what will happen in the future. The fact is it cannot be done. That is to small of a sample to use to calcuate what may happen. Face it we just aren't smart enought to do that with any degree of certainty.

I for one will nto get caught up in the latest hysteria, that's why I used the New Ice Age and Nuke Power examples. This global warming is the end of the world bs is just a bunch of propaganda just as those things were.

My final position (and the position of the vast majority of those who study global climates) is that we are in a warming period but it is no different that the other warming periods. It will have a beginning and an end.

In closing all the things I have read have all said that we should be careful with the environment and respect it and should worry about doing harm to it. Any reasonable person knows that. However most reasonable people can also see through the chicken little bs put out.

It's like those damn shark attack stories we are about to hear, pretty soon you will hear that sharks are everywhere attacking every person who goes in teh water. it's all a bunch of bs that the media uses to sell stories. Shark attacks are up no more nationally that they ever have yet some would have you believe that sharks are lurking in sewers waiting to attack you.

I don't think you or I will change what we think, but it's been fun.

Oh and in closing? Have you heard anything abour the ozone layer recently? About 10 years ago we were that in another few years we would not be able to walk outdoors for 5 minute without 100spf .sunblock on. IIt seemed then like every scientist was on the ozone kick, turns out the ozone layer is going to be okay after all.

My final position (and the position of the vast majority of those who study global climates) is that we are in a warming period but it is no different that the other warming periods.

Really? The vast majority? Huh. The American Association for the Advancment of Science (that little rinky-dink group) claims otherwise. You can read the link here, but here's the most relevant part (M&W, excuse the long cut and paste):

The scientific consensus is clearly expressed in the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Created in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environmental Programme, IPCC's purpose is to evaluate the state of climate science as a basis for informed policy action, primarily on the basis of peer-reviewed and published scientific literature. In its most recent assessment, IPCC states unequivocally that the consensus of scientific opinion is that Earth's climate is being affected by human activities: "Human activities ... are modifying the concentration of atmospheric constituents ... that absorb or scatter radiant energy. ... [M]ost of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations".

IPCC is not alone in its conclusions. In recent years, all major scientific bodies in the United States whose members' expertise bears directly on the matter have issued similar statements. For example, the National Academy of Sciences report, 'Climate Change Science: An Analysis of Some Key Questions,' begins: "Greenhouse gases are accumulating in Earth's atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise". The report explicitly asks whether the IPCC assessment is a fair summary of professional scientific thinking, and answers yes: "The IPCC's conclusion that most of the observed warming of the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations accurately reflects the current thinking of the scientific community on this issue."

Others agree. The American Meteorological Society, the American Geophysical Union, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) all have issued statements in recent years concluding that the evidence for human modification of climate is compelling.

Now, as Smokeonthewater says, I may be a phony smartass (however, in my defense--Ph.D. in biology, actually have participated in research projects involving armadillos), but do you really want to claim that the AAAS, the American Meteorological Society, and the American Geophysical Union are just a bunch of propagandists pushing some mysterious agenda? What, exactly, is the benefit of them all ganging up to claim that the climate is being negatively impacted by humans? What is the conspiracy?

Sometimes, there is no cabal.

Last fall I was hiking in the Ozarks at night with only a small flashlight during a full moon. Often I will hear game or cattle off in the woods. I heard something coming though the woods and it was making crashing sounds like I would normally hear with a deer with a large rack or an elk or maybe a bull but I couldn't see ANYTHING or even any movement. The sound kept getting closer but nothing stirred.

It was an armadillo. With the rooting under leaves with their snout makes about the same amount of noise as 3 or 4 people walking in the woods.

I am glad no one saw me. Now I know what they sound like at night.

Those who regulary read this blog, the Arkansas Times and watch Arkansas Week on AETN know very well that Warwick has never let the facts stand in the way of a good story.

Well, in the right mood, I've never been one to let much go by so I'll jump back in with this one comment in re hysteria over nuclear power: Chernobyl. (God, I hope I spelled that right.)
By the way, I must be even better than I thought; I didn't realize I'd zinged Arch -- and I'm not even going to try to spell that one.
Great story, Citizen. I never learned to climb a tree but I bet I would have that night had I been around.

Doigtta-

Car wrecks, the flu, plane crashes and mining accidents kill many more people each month the Chernobyl does.

Chernobyl was the product of a shoddy design and shoddy workmanship.

It could have been much worse but in the grand scheme of things nuke power is the safest and cleanest engergy source we have.

The effects of Chernobyl are ongoing for both humans and the environment. If genetic damage occurred, the effects may continue for generations. Also remember we had a near disaster in this country -- Three Mile Island.
And from a non-accident standpoint, what of the spent fuel rods with no place to go? Do we keep them in their blue, blue pools for eternity? Do we simply hope no disasters befall the storage facilities?

Well I'm a Meterologist and I assure you that Global Warming is happening just like it usually does on this end of the cycle and NO we are not the cause of it. Any "scientist" worth his degrees that has actually looked at the actual data and not just jumped on the bandwagon out of fear of grants drying up can tell you that.