Armadillephants

Armadillephants

While armadillephants browse on grass and shrubbery, and even mash and eat entire tree limbs, they are best known for their speed of burrowing when in pursuit of flesh. While the armadillo prefers small grubs and insets, the armadillephant enjoys prairie dogs and similar prey. Great clawed forepaws and curved tusks not only rip through sod but fracture and excavate all but the hardest sorts of stone, exposing the burrows of their prey. The long trunk snakes in to grasp the elusive prey, effective as any anaconda.

During seasons of poor weather, herds of armadillephants enlarge these burrows, strengthening them by compacting the walls by the pressure of its armored bulk. A herd will excavate numerous shelters scattered across their range. Some build only simple tunnel caves, but, where the earth or stone is conducive, great elaborate labyrinths may be excavated. These contain nursery chambers where young are sheltered, larders where food is stashed, and privies.

As a rule of thumb, the more complex their excavations, the more likely they are to be at home. Those with minimal burrows, mere cull-de-sac caves scattered about their range, are basically nomadic or migratory. Those with elaborate labyrinths may have designated nannies that never leave the caves - or the young kept there; the others bring them food. Nannies are usually older or weaker specimens, but stronger animals will often take shifts of nanny work as a break from foraging - or the hard work of excavation and construction.

Armadillephants are uncannily skilled engineers when it comes to constructing traps. These commonly involve pits, perhaps covered, steep slopes either slick or made slippery by a layer of loose gravel, falling ceilings or collapsing walls, and other features. These constructions guard their home chambers and also serve to catch prey too swift for the armadillephant to catch by pursuit.

Temperate and arctic labyrinth-builders may have lighter armor covered in heavy pelts (which results in the same armor value). Tropical varieties, like their troglodytic cousins, are nearly hairless. Dedicated troglodytic armadillephants build the most elaborate traps. They tend to be a bit smaller and rather denser, with superior armor.

All, whether surface-dwelling or troglodytic, have well develop vibrissae, sensory whiskers on all surfaces. This gives them an acute sense of air movement, equivalent to "blind sight" as regards anything moving in their vicinity. They also have heat-sensitive pits all over their bodies but especially concentrated along the cheek shield margins and trunk edges and tip. This gives them viper-like "heat vision," also known as infra-vision.

Armadillephants are known from Chinese legend, but the physical evidence of their remains, great skeletons, complete with earth-digging tusks, have been dismissed by Western archaeologists as the remains of prehistoric elephants. The Chinese retort that the archaeologists fail to explain how these "elephants" come to be buried in such deep caverns.

Dwarf armadillephants, found in both surface-dwelling and troglodytic varieties, are much smaller; at 1,600 to 2,300 pounds, they are about equal in mass to a large draft horse. They tend to be more carnivorous than their larger cousins, despite dong only a fraction as much damage by trampling or crushing. Their trunks, however, are every bit as effective as their larger cousins'. The dwarf armadillephant is also equal to its larger cousins in terms of armor and speed. Some troglodytic Folk claim dwarf armadillephants can be tamed if caught very young.

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Last update Apr 4, 2006