Mammals
Giant Anteater
Myrmecophaga tridactyla · also called ant bear, oso hormiguero
The giant anteater is a walking specialist — a shaggy, long-snouted, bushy-tailed mammal built entirely around finding ant and termite nests and emptying a little of each. It has no teeth, one of the longest tongues of any animal relative to its head, and a metabolism turned down to match its meagre food.
Overview
Giant anteaters live from Central America to northern Argentina, in grassland, savanna, wetland, dry forest, and rainforest — anywhere with a steady supply of social insects. They are solitary and mostly nocturnal where people are common, diurnal where they are not, and they hold large, loosely defended home ranges. They do not dig burrows; they sleep in a shallow scrape, curled up with the long tail thrown over the body like a blanket.
Built to eat ants
- The snout and tongue. The head narrows to a tube ending in a tiny mouth; the tongue, up to 60 cm, is anchored to the breastbone and flicks in and out about 150 times a minute, coated in sticky saliva.
- The claws. Long, curved fore-claws rip open nests. To protect them, the anteater walks on the knuckles of its front feet, giving it an odd, shuffling gait.
- A low metabolism. Body temperature around 33 °C and long daily rests keep its energy needs within what an insect diet can supply.
It practises a kind of sustainable harvesting, taking only a fraction of each colony — often a few thousand insects in a minute of feeding — then moving on before the defenders overwhelm it, so its food supply regenerates.
Defence
A giant anteater’s first response to danger is to run, in a lumbering canter. Cornered, it rears up on its hind legs and tail and strikes with the fore-claws — an attack powerful enough to have killed jaguars, pumas, and, on rare occasions, humans who provoked one.
Reproduction
A female gives birth, standing up, to a single pup after about six months. The pup rides on her back for up to a year, its stripe pattern lining up with hers so that a predator sees one large animal rather than a vulnerable baby.
Threats and conservation
The giant anteater is Vulnerable and disappearing from the edges of its range. Hunting, habitat conversion to farmland and pasture, road mortality, and grassland fires are the main pressures, and its slow reproduction — one pup every year or two — leaves little room to absorb the losses. It is already gone from much of Central America and parts of southern Brazil, Uruguay, and Argentina.
Giant Anteater: common questions
How does an anteater eat without any teeth?
It does not chew at all. A giant anteater tears a small opening in an ant or termite nest with its powerful fore-claws, then rapidly darts its long, thin, saliva-coated tongue in and out — around 150 times a minute — picking up insects on every flick. It swallows them whole, and a muscular section of its stomach, plus grit it deliberately eats, grinds the food up. Because it takes only a few thousand insects from each nest before leaving, it can crop the same colonies again and again without destroying them.
Why is the giant anteater's body so cool?
Its body temperature runs at about 33 °C, several degrees below the typical mammalian 37 °C and among the lowest of any placental mammal. Ants and termites are a low-energy food, so the anteater has evolved a slow metabolism to match, resting up to 15 hours a day and moving slowly. The trade-off is that it is sensitive to cold nights and has to seek sun or shelter to regulate its temperature.
Is a giant anteater dangerous?
It has no interest in people and will flee if it can, but a cornered giant anteater is genuinely dangerous. It rears onto its hind legs, balancing on its tail, and slashes with fore-claws up to 10 cm long, which can disembowel a predator. There are verified records of giant anteaters killing jaguars and pumas in fights, and a small number of fatal attacks on hunters and farm workers in Brazil who cornered or wounded one.
Why is the giant anteater threatened?
It is listed as Vulnerable and declining. It is a large, slow, ground-dwelling animal that is easy to hunt for meat and killed as a supposed threat to dogs and livestock. Its grassland and savanna habitat is being converted to cropland and cattle pasture, roads through its range kill huge numbers (it is one of the most frequent large-mammal roadkills in parts of Brazil), and grassland fires — natural and deliberate — burn slow-moving anteaters directly.