2.2 Capture and chemical immobilization in the Pantanal
Free ranging armadillos from Pantanal were manually captured and anesthetized. Small species such as D. novemcinctus , E. sexcinctus and C. unicinctus were captured by hand or using long-handled dip nets. P. maximus were caught using cylindrical iron traps that were placed at the entrance of burrows (Desbiez et al., 2020). Anesthesia was induced using a combination of butorphanol tartrate (Zoetis Indústria de Produtos Veterinários Ltda, São Paulo/SP, Brazil; 0.1 mg/kg), detomidine hydrochloride (Agener-União, Apucarana/PR, Brazil; 0.1 mg/kg), and midazolam hydrochloride (Cristália, Itapira/SP, Brazil; 0.1 mg/kg), by intramuscular injection in the hind limbs (Kluyber et al., in press).
During anesthesia, animals were identified, sexed, weighed and had their age estimated based on Desbiez et al. (2019). Additional microchip tagging and morphometric measurements were performed. Animals were released in the same day at the location they were captured, immediately after complete anesthesia recovery.