Armadillos are becoming a more common sight in East Tennessee.Move over, opossum – the nine-banded armadillo has arrived in East Tennessee.
The armored mammals are here, they’re spreading faster than expected and likely can survive anywhere in the Volunteer State — except maybe for the highest, coldest peaks in the Smokies.
That’s according to Timothy Gaudin, a biology professor at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, who published a study with student S. Erich Eichler confirming the existence of armadillos here — including as high as 1,988 feet in the Cumberland Plateau.
“We were quite surprised,” Gaudin said. “That’s not where you would predict them to be. You typically find them along stream beds.”
Nine-banded armadillos first appeared in Tennessee in the early 1980s, the researchers wrote, when they got a toehold in the far southwestern part of the state.