Ask Your Weird Animal Questions: What’s a Pink Fairy Armadillo?
Are there very few pink fairy armadillos, or are they just good at hiding?
When you write about weird animals all the time, it takes something really special to make you ask, “What is that?”
That’s what I thought when I saw the pink fairy armadillo. It looks like a cross between a guinea pig and a shrimp wearing dragon-lady fingernails. So I emailed Mariella Superina, chair of the IUCN/SSC Anteater, Sloth, and Armadillo Specialist Group to ask about them.
It turns out that researchers don’t know enough about this central Argentina native to say whether they’re rare or just really shy. The IUCN Red List categorizes the species as “data deficient.” Even Superina hasn’t seen one in the wild during her 13-year-long career.
“The locals don’t know how to track them down in spite
