If Armadillos Taste Like Pork, Why Don't We Eat Them?

People who've eaten armadillo say it tastes like pork, and the nine-banded armadillo is spreading across Texas, Florida and the American South. So why don't we eat armadillos? The answer comes down to a few degrees of body temperature, and a germ that has been feared for thousands of years. During the Great Depression, Texans called it the "Hoover hog." In Brazil, hunters still cook it in its own shell. But in 1971, biologist Eleanor Storrs discovered that armadillos are the perfect home for leprosy (Hansen's disease), and later research by Richard Truman's team linked the same strain in wild armadillos to patients in Louisiana and Texas. Add tiny litters of identical quadruplets, a diet of bugs and a disease that can hide for ten years, and you get an animal that tastes like pork but was never going to fill a supermarket. Chapters: 0:00 The Hoover hog on a Texas back road 0:58 Does armadillo meat actually taste bad? 1:31 Are there too few armadillos to eat? 2:09 The armadillo runs cold 3:03 Eleanor Storrs and the leprosy discovery 4:00 Can armadillos give leprosy to people? 6:04 Why nobody can sell or farm armadillo References: NPR, Mysterious leprosy cases linked to armadillos (Truman et al., 2011): https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/... Florida Tech, Eleanor Storrs and the armadillo leprosy research: https://news.fit.edu/?p=59110 University of Florida, More than 16 percent of Florida's armadillos carry leprosy bacterium: https://epi.ufl.edu/2015/12/04/more-than-1... Mongabay, Leprosy prevalent among Amazon's armadillos, study finds (da Silva et al., 2018): https://news.mongabay.com/2018/06/leprosy-... National Geographic, Armadillos are expanding their US range: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals... CBS12, Florida reports 36 leprosy cases in 2025: https://cbs12.com/news/local/florida-repor...