Asteroid 2023 FL2 is 35 meters, which is as much as almost 33 nine-banded armadillos lined up tail-to-snout. However, it won't hit us, and armadillos might even be more dangerous.The asteroid in question has been designated 2023 FL2 and was discovered just this year, according to the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).
So how big are nine banded armadillos?
Wikipedia says:
Nine-banded armadillos generally weigh from 2.5–6.5 kg (5.5–14.3 lb), though the largest specimens can scale up to 10 kg (22 lb). They are one of the largest species of armadillos.[7] Head and body length is 38–58 cm (15–23 in), which combines with the 26–53 cm (10–21 in) tail, for a total length of 64–107 cm (25–42 in).
Most people north of Oklahoma or Texas only have seen them dead as road kill, which is the idea behind this comment on the Instapundit site:
Nine-banded armadillos are Texas truck mines, waiting on the road to perfectly time their defensive behavior jump to enter into the fan housing of your average (older) truck. Such a mess.
their tendency to jump to avoid predators explains why so many become road kill.
When startled, the nine-banded armadillo can jump straight upward about three to four feet into the air. This reflex may help scare off predators in the wild. Unfortunately, many armadillos are killed when they jump into the underside of moving vehicles.
But please be careful when you touch an armadillo: They are the only non human animal that carries Hansens disease, aka Leprosy.
Smithsonian article discusses this.
This is a minor problem in the USA where only a couple dozen cases a year catch this disease, but as poor people move into the Amazon to farm, they also tend to eat meat from local animals, including the armadillo.
The U.S. documents around 200 cases of leprosy each year—only around 25 percent of which are associated with armadillos. But Brazil records around 25,000 cases annually, which may actually be an underestimate according to Spencer’s research.
Note: the research was on a small number of people and most had antibodies, suggesting exposure, but no active disease
And while it’s true that armadillos can serve as a reservoir for leprosy that can sometimes spill back into humans, it’s worth noting that we gave them the disease first. “People brought leprosy from Europe, with the ships that came from the colonizers,” Spencer says.
uh, stop blaming Europe as the source of the disease: it came from Africa via the European slave traders.
actually leprosy, which was common in medieval Europe, sort of disappeared after the black plague killed most of the lepers, while leprosy in west Africa, where the Europeans obtained slaves, is still a health problem.
40 years ago, when I worked in Liberia, I knew the nun who ran the leprosy treatment outreach clinics there.
She was funded by the Knights of Malta, who are one of the NGOs who work with the WHO to are trying to eradicate the disease there.).
Atlas obscura article about the Knights of Malta,
Also known as the Knights or Hospitallers of Malta, the Order has a global staff of some 42,000—mostly medical personnel, from a range of religions—and almost twice that many volunteers. There are national associations empowered to set their own humanitarian agendas, and no central, governing authority for these programs. The Order’s staff has provided disaster relief after typhoons, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions, as well as care for people afflicted with ebola or leprosy in West Africa and Southeast Asia, and operates specialized dementia facilities in the United Kingdom, Germany, and France.
Leprosy is easily treated nowadays and with aggressive treatment, can be eliminated from countries.
This site has up to date statistics and information on how the disease is eradicated. And it seems to be working:
Over the past 20 years, more than 16 million leprosy patients have been treated. The prevalence rate of the disease has dropped by 99%: from 21.1 cases per 10 000 people in 1983 to 0.2 cases per 10 000 people in 2015. A dramatic decrease has been achieved in the global disease burden: from 5.2 million people with leprosy in 1985, to 805 000 people in 1995, 753 000 in 1999, and 176 176 people with leprosy at the end of 2015.
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