Because sometimes what you need most is to watch a baby armadillo named Spock, yes, Spock (look at those wee Vulcan ears!), lapping up milk from a teeny-tiny bowl at Zoo Wroclaw in Poland:
After Spock’s mom, Hermonia, showed no interest in her newborn pup, zookeepers jumped in to raise him by hand. It took the keepers a little while to successfully get Spock to nurse because he wouldn’t drink from a bottle or an eyedropper. This tiny red bowl, however, turned out to be just right. By the time Spock reached 6 weeks old, he’d already tripled his weight.
Head over to ZooBorns to learn more about Southern Three-banded Armadillos and Spock the armadillo pup.
Fun fact: In Spanish, -illo is a diminutive suffix (ending that makes a word a smaller or cuter version of the original).
Armado = armored. As in English, adjectives can be used as nouns, so armado can also mean “armored one.” Armadillo = little armored one.
So imagine, if you will, a couple of Conquistadors standing around, unable or unwilling to ask a Native person what things are really called, and this animal walks by.
