Cracking the case

A life-changing encounter with the secretive giant armadillo led conservationist Arnaud Desbiez to dedicate his work to saving the mammal from extinction

- Jeremy Hance

Arnaud Desbiez, a French-born conservationist, lived in the Brazilian Pantanal for years before a chance encounter changed his life – and he wasn’t even there for it. His wife, Patrícia Medici, a tapir conservationist, happened upon a giant armadillo one night in 2009 while she was working in the field. Hearing the story lit a fire in Desbiez.

“This was my dream species, the holy grail of all mammals,” he said. “I said, ‘You know what? If I could just see it.’”

Weighing up to 50kg and growing up to 1.5 metres in length , the giant armadillo ( Priodontes maximus ) is bigger than most large dogs, with a 15 cm sickle claw used to plunder rock-hard termite mounds. Yet it was one of the least understood – and least recorded – animals. With a very low demographic density and shy nighttime behaviour, the giant armadillo was mostly a ghost of South America – until Desbiez set to work.

Desbiez’s first step was to install remote camera traps. “A few months later, I got my first image of a giant armadillo . That picture completely changed my life,” he said. Since then, he has been cracking the mysteries of the animal, upending previous notions about its breeding, parenting and ecological importance, and finding ways to protect the giant from extinction.