Issue date: 8/28/07 Section: News

Media Credit: Tommy Tang Texas A&M professor and author Bill Klemm sits outside of the College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences Administration Building Wednesday. His book 'Dillos: Roadkill on Extinction Highway? was published in July. [Click to enlarge]

Bill Klemm is known to many of the students and faculty of Texas A&M as a retired professor of neuroscience and veterinary integrative biosciences. However, he is also known as an armadillo lover.

"In the hippie movement in Austin­­­ - that's when they really got popular," Klemm said of the Texas state mammal. "If you go to Austin everything is 'dillos."

His most recent book, 'Dillos: Roadkill on Extinction Highway, published in July, talks about the animal's natural history and explains why Klemm thinks they have been able to survive for so long.

In the book, Klemm also predicts what will happen to armadillos in the future.

"Urban sprawl is encroaching on their habitat," he said. "But I think they'll make it. They may not make it in Texas but there are 18 other species in South America that don't have these problems."

He said armadillos are carriers of several diseases, including leprosy, but that they do not seem to contract these diseases themselves.

"They are the only animal that can come down with leprosy," Klemm said. "The organism lives in the soil and so these animals are shoving their nose in the dirt all the time. It's not surprising that they pick it up."

Klemm's interest in neuroscience once led him to perform a sleep study on the armadillo. He said armadillos do have signs of dreaming and regular sleep patterns.

Klemm is also the author of Thank You, Brain, For All You Remember. What You Forgot Was My Fault, a book about the brain and its memory.

"It always struck me that there's a lot of useful stuff being published in scientific journals that nobody reads, that students could use," he said. "So I wrote this book to summarize what's known in research journals that people can use."

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