27-05-2025
Pittsburgh Zoo welcomes 3 adorable armadillo pups
The Pittsburgh Zoo is welcoming three adorable baby nine-banded armadillo pups.
The zoo on social media shared a video of Boulder, Geode and Onyx. The three pups were born with soft leathery skin that hardens within a few weeks. The video shows the zoo's education team caring for the pups as they transform from little pink babies.
The armadillos will join the zoo's other animal ambassadors, which visitors can see through education programming, outreach, special visits and select wild encounters.
The nine-banded armadillo isn't native to North America, but the National Park Service says they can be found all over the southern states, and their range is slowly expanding north, with some found as far as Illinois. Armadillos migrated across the Rio Grande in the mid-1880s and merged with another population that was established in Florida.
When you imagine an armadillo, you may picture it curling up in a ball. But the nine-banded armadillo actually can't. Instead, it jumps about three feet up in the air, and since it can't control which direction it goes, the unpredictability scares off predators, the National Park Service explains.
The three nine-banded armadillo pups aren't the only recent new arrivals at the zoo. Hondo, an 8-year-old African lion from the Idaho Falls Zoo, is making a home in Pittsburgh. The hope is that he'll be a companion for lionesses Abana and Scarlett. Those two came to the zoo in 2019 with Kit, who died in 2023.
