Filming any form of wildlife, whether it's a rare mammal in the rainforest or a common bird in your garden, can be maddeningly difficult. It's not just that animals are generally wary of humans and like to stay out of our way. When you point a camera at them, they instinctively sense they're being hunted and are even less likely to show up in the way you're hoping for.
A trail camera – a camera left in place that fires automatically when an animal passes – can help get around that issue. Yet with certain animals, you're still crossing all your fingers and thumbs that they'll turn up at all. And the giant armadillo very much fits into that category.
Native to much of South America, it's well known for staying out of sight. It lives alone, spends the day in its burrows, and mostly comes out after dark to look for food. Babies are especially rare to see, because giant armadillos breed so slowly: females give birth only about once every three years.
All of which makes this new footage all the more remarkable: a camera trap in the Peruvian Amazon has filmed a baby giant armadillo in the wild
Conservation group Amazon Research International set up the camera in the Loreto region of Peru. The short clip, which you can see below, shows the young armadillo scurrying through the forest.
“Giant armadillos are amongst the most difficult animals to see on a camera trap,” Rosa Vásquez Espinoza, the group’s founder, told Wild Lives, the BBC Wildlife podcast. “People can spend over a year [with] hundreds of cameras to try to get a single clip.”
She put her team’s success down to working with Indigenous colleagues and added: “Seeing a baby giant armadillo is not something we ever dreamed of. It’s so hopeful for us, seeing all this wildlife.”
Filmed with purpose
It’s a fun clip, but there’s a serious point to it. The giant armadillo is listed as vulnerable by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), and its numbers are falling due to habitat loss caused by deforestation, cattle ranching and farming, as well as hunting.
Now Amazon Research Internacional plans to use its footage as evidence to push for a new local law in Loreto to protect the giant armadillo and other large mammals. Part of this area is already protected because of Espinoza’s work with stingless bees.
You can hear the full interview on the Wild Lives podcast from BBC Wildlife.
