In taking up the new edition of The Nine-banded Armadillo; A Natural History, I was still pondering over the news I had recently read explaining that Dasypus novemcinctus, the taxonomic binomial for the title species, has been discovered to be four different species, the northern most of which was to be re-identified as the Mexican Long-nosed Armadillo. How, I wondered, does one review a book about the natural history of a species when that species has since the time of the book’s publication been re-defined?
As it happened, later that same day I found myself listening to the new EI Weekly Listen podcast from Englesberg Ideas. The essay being read was Iskander Rehman’s “An Early Modern Guide to Information Overload,” in which he quoted Juan Luis Vives’ own sixteenth century essay On Education, “Even a knowledge of that which has been changed is useful; whether you recall something of the past to guide you in what would be useful in your own case, or whether you apply something, which formerly was managed in such and such a way, and so adapt the same or a similar method, to your own actions, as the case may fit.”
Of course. And indeed, as I soon discovered, the authors themselves, in the new preface to this new edition – the original having been first published in 2013 – take up the matter of the anticipated taxonomic split directly, even going so far to assert that the name of the book itself should be changed to The Mexican Long-nosed Armadillo; A Natural History. Problem solved.
As to the book itself, even after a short time reading it, I found my understanding of the evolutionary history, biology, and ecology of the armadillo, an animal about which I had previously given little thought, remarkably enlarged. With each turn of a page, I have found my interest in, and respect for, these curious little Xenarthans growing. From their automobile-sized pre-historic relatives to their reproductive polyembryony, by which they give birth to identical quadruplets, to their present range expansion and the reasons for such occurring, there is much to discover about them contained within this book. Thus even though the title may need to be changed in a future edition, this present one is very much worth reading in and of itself.
