Here's a story we hear every summer. A homeowner sets a wire cage trap next to the vegetable garden, loads it with banana slices and a smear of peanut butter, and goes to bed confident. The next morning the banana is still sitting there, browning in the dew, and there are five fresh holes in the mulch about a foot and a half past the trap door. If you've ever wondered what do armadillos eat, that scene answers it: nothing you'd put in a trap, and almost everything living under your grass.
We build handmade wooden armadillo traps in Sumrall, Mississippi, and the armadillo diet is the most useful thing a homeowner can learn about this animal. It explains why the holes show up where they do, why the damage gets worse after rain, and why food bait is mostly a waste of a good banana.
What Do Armadillos Eat? The Short Answer
The nine-banded armadillo, the only armadillo species living in the United States, is an insectivore at heart. Insects, grubs and earthworms often make up more than 90 percent of what it eats, according to University of Georgia Extension. Nearly all of that food lives in the top few inches of soil, which is exactly where your lawn's roots, your mulch, and your flower bulbs live too.
The one-sentence version: an armadillo doesn't want your plants, it wants the soft-bodied animals living under them, and it will move whatever is in the way to get at them.
The main course: what armadillos dig for in your yard
- Beetle grubs. The fat, white, C-shaped larvae of June beetles and other scarabs that feed on grass roots. A lawn with a heavy grub load is a buffet.
- Earthworms. Plentiful in moist, rich soil, especially in well-watered lawns and freshly mulched beds.
- Ants and termites. Armadillos tear into ant mounds and rotting wood to lap up the colony with a long, sticky tongue.
- Other ground insects. Beetles, cutworms, crickets, cockroaches, and assorted larvae that live in leaf litter and thatch.
- Other invertebrates. Spiders, millipedes, centipedes, scorpions, and snails when they turn up.
The side dishes: what armadillos eat only occasionally
Armadillos are opportunists, so the remaining sliver of the diet is a grab bag. They'll take the occasional small frog, lizard, or the eggs of a ground-nesting bird. They'll eat carrion if they stumble across it, and now and then a bit of fallen fruit, berries, or fungus. None of these is the reason an armadillo comes back to your yard night after night.
What they don't eat: your plants
This surprises a lot of gardeners: when an armadillo uproots a row of new annuals or flips over a bed of pansies, it usually isn't eating them. It's rooting under them for the grubs and worms that gather around fresh roots and moist, loosened soil. The plants are collateral damage, which is why the mess looks so careless: plants tossed aside, mulch sprayed onto the walk, and a neat little cone-shaped hole left behind.
How Armadillos Find Food Underground
An armadillo's body is built around its diet. Its eyesight is poor, but its sense of smell is excellent, and it forages with its nose almost touching the ground, sniffing out insects and worms buried several inches deep. When it picks up a scent, its powerful front claws open a quick hole, and its long, sticky tongue pulls the meal out.
Most of this happens at night. In the warm months armadillos usually emerge after dark and forage for hours, which is why homeowners wake up to the damage without ever seeing the animal. In cold snaps they shift to midday foraging, when the ground is warmest. Armadillos carry very little body fat and can't dig through frozen soil, so a long hard freeze is rough on them. That dependence on soft, insect-rich soil is a big part of why they are most common across the South.
One armadillo can cover a lot of ground in a night, poking dozens of holes as it works across a yard. It isn't being destructive for fun. Each hole marks a spot where its nose picked up something worth eating.
Armadillo digging up your yard? Our pre-scented wooden trap is proven 8X more effective by Mississippi State University, and no bait is needed.
Shop the Armadillo TrapWhat the Armadillo Diet Means for Your Yard
Once you know what armadillos eat, the pattern of damage makes sense. The holes in your lawn are usually 1 to 3 inches deep and 3 to 5 inches long, shaped like a small cone or funnel. Those are feeding holes, not dens. If you're seeing larger burrows near a foundation, a slab, or a woodpile, that's a different behavior, and our guide to armadillo yard damage walks through how to tell the difference and how to rule out other diggers.
Why the watered half of the yard gets hit hardest
Moisture is a big tell. Earthworms and grubs move up toward the surface when the soil is damp, and wet ground is easier to dig. We regularly talk with homeowners whose sprinkler zone along the driveway is pocked with holes every morning while the dry side lot next to it, which the sprinklers never reach, stays untouched. The armadillo isn't picky about grass type. It's following the food, and the food follows the water.
Freshly mulched beds and heavy grub years
The same logic applies to new mulch, compost, and leaf litter. They hold moisture and attract worms and insects, so a freshly mulched bed can become the most rewarding square footage in the neighborhood. Lawns with a heavy grub infestation draw armadillos too, and in those yards you'll often see brown, spongy patches where the grubs have been eating grass roots, right alongside the holes.
Can you starve an armadillo out?
Partly. Treating a confirmed grub problem with beneficial nematodes or a labeled grub product, and watering deeply but less often, both make your yard less appealing. But you can't, and shouldn't, wipe out every earthworm and beetle in your soil. A healthy lawn will always have some food in it, which is why reducing the food works best as the follow-up to removing the armadillo, not as a replacement for it.
Why Food Bait Rarely Works in an Armadillo Trap
Now back to that untouched banana. The answer to what do armadillos eat is exactly why the trap failed. Fruit, peanut butter, eggs and pet food are not what an armadillo is hunting for, and a handful of worms in a trap is competing with thousands already living in the soil around it. Add poor eyesight, and an armadillo walking past a baited trap often doesn't even register it's there.
Research backs this up. From April to July 2004, University of Georgia researchers live-trapped armadillos in southwest Georgia and tested 11 different baits and lures over 1,332 trap nights. You can read the full findings in the UGA Extension circular on armadillo attractants. Here's what happened:
| Bait or lure | Trap nights | Armadillos caught |
|---|---|---|
| Crickets | 94 | 1 |
| Rotten eggs | 52 | 1 |
| Moistened soil | 44 | 1 |
| Commercial armadillo lure | 102 | 1 |
| Night crawlers, chicken feed, whole eggs, bananas, marshmallows, sardines and vanilla wafers combined | 1,040 | 0 |
Seven of the eleven attractants caught nothing at all, including bananas and night crawlers. Six of the ten armadillos caught during the study walked into traps with no bait in them, and four of those six were in traps fitted with "wings" that funnel the animal toward the door. The researchers found no meaningful difference between baited and unbaited traps and recommended putting the effort into where the trap goes. We break down every bait option in our page on armadillo bait, including why peanut butter and sardines tend to catch raccoons, opossums, and the neighbor's cat instead.
What actually draws an armadillo into a trap
If food doesn't work, scent and placement do. Armadillos communicate by scent and keep to the same travel routes night after night, so a trap works when it sits on one of those routes and smells like another armadillo. That's the idea behind our scented armadillo trap. It's built from 3/4 inch treated plywood that soaks up and holds armadillo scent, it arrives pre-scented, and in Mississippi State University field testing it caught about eight times as many armadillos as standard wire cage traps. No bait required.
A solid wooden box also suits the animal's instincts better than a wire cage. It feels like a hollow log or a burrow, the kind of dark, enclosed space an armadillo is happy to investigate. Our comparison of the two styles of armadillo live trap covers why that matters.
Setting a trap that works with the armadillo diet, not against it
- Skip the bait. It mostly attracts raccoons, opossums, and pets.
- Set the trap flat against an edge the armadillo already travels: a fence line, foundation, bed border, or fallen log near fresh holes.
- Stake two long boards on edge in a V in front of the door to guide the animal in.
- Keep the trap in shade and leave it in place so the scent builds up.
- Check it every morning, wear gloves when handling a catch, and follow your state's wildlife rules on release.
Quick Answers: What Do Armadillos Eat Besides Insects?
Do armadillos eat vegetables or flower bulbs?
Rarely. They may nibble fallen fruit or the occasional tender plant, but the damage in vegetable gardens and flower beds almost always comes from digging for the insects and worms in the soil around the roots.
Do armadillos eat fire ants?
They do eat ants, including fire ants, and they'll tear into a mound to get at the larvae. That doesn't make them useful pest control, though. The lawn damage they cause along the way is usually far worse than the ants they eat.
What do armadillos eat in winter?
The same things, just harder to reach. Insects and worms move deeper as the soil cools, so armadillos forage during the warmest part of the day and dig wherever the ground stays soft. A long hard freeze can cut them off from food entirely.
Will armadillos eat pet food left outside?
It isn't something they seek out. Pet food left on a porch is far more likely to draw raccoons, opossums, and stray cats, which is one more reason to bring the bowl in at night.