The other day, Amanda Walding was driving to work near her home in Texas when something in the road ahead caught her eye.
At first, it appeared to be a family of raccoons or opossums. From a distance, Walding could see a train of little babies marching in a row behind their mother, from one side of the street to the other.
But then she got closer and put on the brakes — and that’s when she realized this was actually a rare kind of sighting.
The animals Walding had stopped for were, in fact, armadillos. But there was something unique about this family — so much so she decided to share her encounter with officials from Texas Parks and Wildlife.
“1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 … wait, what?” Texas Parks and Wildlife wrote in a post. “Texas armadillos always give birth to identical quadruplets. But this mom has 7 pups — a rare occurrence!”
Here’s footage of Walding’s surprise encounter with that unexpectedly large family:
“I had seen baby armadillos one other time in the wild a couple years ago. That momma had the typical four babies an armadillo has,” Walding told The Dodo. “I knew this was special and exciting when I counted that she had seven.”
The armadillo mom certainly had her hands full — though, in the end, says Walding, she was able to shuffle all seven babies safely across the road.
But how did this mom come to have such a big family?
Getty Images/Kanokwalee Pusitanun
According to the National Wildlife Federation, armadillos “almost always” have four identical offspring — the result of a single fertilized egg splitting twice. However, though rare, variations from this norm are not unheard of.
“Texas Parks and Wildlife spoke with their specialist and confirmed it is possible that all seven do belong to this momma,” Walding said.
Another possibility is that the armadillo mom adopted several of the babies as orphans, but this cannot be known for sure.
Either way, Walding is delighted to have been delayed by them:
“It is always so exciting to see the new babies in the spring and early summer,” Walding said.
