"I am very excited as we have been keeping armadillos for nine years," said Caspar Bijleveld van Lexmond, head of Papiliorama, the nature reserve in the western Swiss town of Chietres, about the births, which occurred in mid-October.

"It is a rare event for them to breed in captivity," he told AFP.

The only other case the director was aware of was at a zoo in Holland.

On October 16, a nine-banded armadillo called Sanata gave birth to six babies in the Nocturama, a section of the zoo which houses nocturnal creatures from central and southern America.

Three males survived, explained Chantal Derungs, a biologist at Papiliorama, which is a private institute that specialises in protecting rare animals.

"Our ultimate aim is to put them back into the wild," she said.

"There are not many armadillo populations in zoos because they are pretty delicate creatures to look after, they need a certain room temperature and good conditions to breed," said Derungs.

No one has named the baby armadillos yet, but van Lexmond said he would probably launch a competition for school children to give them names.

Armadillos, who originated in South America but have also moved north into the United States, are endangered in the wild due to the destruction of their habitat by humans and also the fact that people like to eat them. Of the 20 different species of armadillo, the nine-banded variety is the most common.

The creatures, who are closely related to sloths and anteaters eat anything from plants to animal carcasses and cost about 15 Swiss francs (10 euros, 12 dollars) per week to keep in captivity, said van Lexmond.

Nocturama, which now has five armadillos, has bred even rarer animals in the past, including ocelots, two-toed sloths and night monkeys.

TERRA.WIRE