Giant Anteater

About the giant anteater

The giant anteater is an insectivorous mammal native to Central and South America and the largest of the four living anteater species. It belongs to the order Pilosa, which it shares with sloths, and it's the only living member of its genus, Myrmecophaga. Unlike the other living anteaters and sloths, which are arboreal or semi-arboreal, the giant anteater is mostly terrestrial. It's easy to recognize by its elongated snout, bushy tail, long foreclaws, and distinctively patterned fur.

Carl Linnaeus gave the giant anteater its scientific name in 1758. Myrmecophaga is Greek for "anteater," and tridactyla means "three fingers." Three subspecies have been proposed, split roughly across Venezuela and the Guianas, Central America into northwestern Colombia and Ecuador, and northeastern Colombia into northwestern Venezuela. The species is grouped with the semi-arboreal northern and southern tamanduas in the family Myrmecophagidae; together with the family that contains the arboreal silky anteater, these make up the suborder Vermilingua. Genetic studies estimate that the giant anteater's lineage split from the tamanduas around 13 million years ago, during the Miocene.

An adult giant anteater has a total body length of 182 to 217 cm (72 to 85 in). Males weigh 33 to 50 kg (73 to 110 lb) and females 27 to 47 kg (60 to 104 lb), with males generally larger and more robust, although the sexes can be hard to tell apart at a distance. The head alone runs about 30 cm (12 in) long, dominated by a narrow, cylindrical snout, with relatively small eyes, ears, and mouth. Eyesight is poor, but the sense of smell is about 40 times stronger than a human's. The coat is mostly grayish brown or black with mottled white, with white front legs marked by black rings at the wrists, darker hind legs, a brown tail, and a bold black band edged in white running from the throat to the shoulders — a pattern researchers believe functions as warning coloration rather than camouflage.

Behavior and diet

Giant anteaters feed almost entirely on ants and termites, a diet called myrmecophagy. They track prey by scent, tear open a nest with their large foreclaws, and use a long, sticky tongue to collect eggs, larvae, and adult insects. The tongue runs about 60 cm (24 in), can extend up to 45 cm (18 in), and moves in and out of the mouth roughly 160 times a minute — nearly three times a second. The animal has no teeth and only limited jaw movement, instead opening and closing its mouth by rotating the two halves of its lower jaw. Its stomach works something like a bird's gizzard, using hardened folds plus swallowed sand and soil to crush food, and since it can't produce its own stomach acid, it relies on formic acid from the ants and termites it eats to help digest them. Which prey dominates the diet depends on habitat and season: in regularly flooded regions ants are more plentiful and make up more of the diet, while in grassland regions termites are the bigger food source; at one well-studied site, anteaters shift from mostly ants in the wet season to mostly termites in the dry season. A single anteater may attack up to 200 insect nests in one day.

Giant anteaters live mostly solitary lives within overlapping home ranges, which vary enormously in size — from about 2.7 km² (1.0 sq mi) at one Brazilian park to as large as 32.5 km² (12.5 sq mi) in an Argentine reserve. They keep track of one another through scent secretions and tree markings, and appear able to recognize individuals by the scent of their saliva. In the Pantanal, one study found activity patterns shifting with temperature: anteaters were mostly nocturnal when it was warm and more active in daylight as temperatures dropped, though diurnal anteaters have also been observed elsewhere, at Serra da Canastra. Anteaters forage and travel through open areas while resting in forest cover, which offers shade in heat and warmth in cooler weather. They may cover an average of 3,700 m (12,100 ft) a day, and they're capable swimmers, sometimes crossing wide rivers, and have even been seen climbing termite mounds and trees. When resting, an anteater curls up with its bushy tail draped over its body for warmth and camouflage. Aside from mothers raising young on their backs until weaning, social contact is mostly limited to mating and to aggressive encounters between males, which start with circling and a "harrr" vocalization and can escalate into chasing, wrestling, and slashing with the claws.

Range and habitat

The giant anteater's range stretches from Honduras south through Bolivia and into northern Argentina, with fossil remains found as far north as northwestern Sonora, Mexico. It has been wiped out across much of its former range, including all of Uruguay, Belize, El Salvador, and Guatemala, as well as parts of Costa Rica, Brazil, Argentina, and Paraguay. The species uses both tropical rainforest and arid shrubland, provided enough ant and termite prey is present, and within a given landscape it typically forages in open grassland or savanna while retreating into denser forest to rest.

Conservation status

The giant anteater is listed as Vulnerable (VU) by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and is included under CITES Appendix II, which tightly restricts international trade in specimens. By 2014, the total population had declined more than 30 percent over the prior three generations. Habitat destruction, fire, and poaching for fur and bushmeat are named threats, along with vehicle collisions, attacks by dogs, and habitat fragmentation from roads — one Brazilian study found that roads harm anteater populations more through fragmenting habitat than through direct vehicle strikes. Fire is a particular danger because the anteater's coat can catch easily and the animal is too slow to escape; in 1994, roughly 340 giant anteaters died in wildfires at Emas National Park in Brazil. The species is also hunted in Bolivia for trophies and food, its hide is used for horse-riding equipment in the Chaco, and it is killed in Venezuela for its claws and elsewhere out of fear during threat displays. Its wide range and habitat flexibility remain among its biggest advantages, and it finds refuge in protected areas across the Amazon, Pantanal, and Cerrado; some local governments in Argentina list it as a national heritage species with official protection.