June 20, 2021

Have You Ever Seen the Adorable Pink Fairy Armadillo? No? It’s…Amazing.

Tough-shelled, industrious, and very, very shy.

Smithsonian/Mother Jones illustration

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If you’re in the market for a new Pride Month mascot, look no further. When the Smithsonian tweeted a photo of the pink fairy armadillo this week, I did a double-take. What a beautiful, strange thing! At only six inches, it is the world’s smallest known armadillo; that pink-hued shell is colored by blood-vessels that help the armadillo regulate its body temperature.

It’s also very, very shy, according to this WIRED profile. Not much is known about this nocturnal and subterranean creature that burrows under the dry Argentinian grasslands with “huge claws and busy little tractor bum.” Humans rarely get a glimpse. What limited scholarship exists paints a worrying picture of a creature highly susceptible to minute environmental changes (it’s very hard to keep in captivity), and it may be under threat from farming and invasive species. The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service lists it as endangered.

Thanks to the Smithsonian, our hard-shelled fairy friend, a sort of real-life Pokémon, is getting a well-deserved boomlet of attention:

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

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