We knew it! We knew Michael Bay films were the cause of plague! “Armageddon” really was celluloid leprosy! Quick, let’s burn him at the stake!
Wait, you mean the actual animal, as in the real armadillo, can give you leprosy? Nuts. Can we still burn Michael Bay at the stake?
We’ve known the humble armadillo has carried strains of leprosy for centuries, thanks to, well, us merrily shipping lepers to any hellhole we could find just to get them the hell away from us, and that unsurprisingly means big chunks of Texas. We also knew that in extremely rare cases, people who never left the country or really did much of anything to catch leprosy got leprosy anyway. But we’ve only now proven those two things have something to do with one another.
Turns out, armadillos carry the same strain as human leprosy, thanks to their low body temperature. The shambling little guys have a low heat, and leprosy likes it in the low 80s (90% of people who catch it fight it off without ever knowing they had it).
What does this mean? Texans no longer have something to eat on the half shell: people are advised not to handle or eat armadillos.
Wait…people actually ate armadillos?
[ via the Hansen fans at io9 ]