An adult armadillo.


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Leprosy And Armadillos - I have caught so many potentially dangerous animals in my life that I can write a whole book on it. It does not, however, scare me for a second whenever I am dealing with an animal situation which most people would consider to be extremely hazardous. That is a part of the job that I do and I accept it wholeheartedly as it is. After reading my posts about armadillos and seeing my adventures with them through pictures, a lot of concerned readers and people out there wrote back to me about the supposed link between leprosy and armadillos.

Apparently, one has a higher risk of developing leprosy after coming in direct contact with an armadillo and I did not know that, not that I am showing any signs of leprosy. In fact, if you read my last post and look at the picture on it, I am holding the baby armadillo with my bare hands and caught it with them too. Since in my area of work, I come across a lot of such information, I sometimes do not pay too much attention to it because I do not know how authentic the piece of information is. I did, however, stand corrected when I came across a research that showed a definite link between touching an armadillo and increased chances of leprosy.

I usually do wear gloves out of habit, but when catching this armadillo, I took special care that my hands were covered and did not come in contact with the armadillo at any point. This right here is an adult armadillo that I caught off someone’s property.

One more thing that I found out was that there is a greater risk of developing leprosy if you eat armadillo meat (yes, there are people who do that!), and since I don’t, maybe there isn’t anything to be concerned about after all.