Anteaters are the only family in the infraorder Vermilingua of the order Edentata. The word "Edentata" means "without teeth," and anteaters are the only truly toothless Edentates. Animals such as the aardvark (cape anteater), pangolin (scaly anteater), numbat (banded anteater), and echidna (spiny anteater), are commonly thought of as relatives of "real" anteaters, but they are not strictly so.
Anteaters are characterised by a lack of teeth in their long snouts, an extraordinarily long tongue, paws with very sharp, long claws, and small round brains. They are insectivores, but sometimes eat soft fruit. They are relatively primitive animals. Their sense of smell rather than any other is used to find prey — mainly ants and termites — and then the mighty claws are brought into action to demolish the nest, allowing the sticky, extrusible tongue, coated in saliva from the animals' large glands, to get at the inhabitants.
Travel is usually undertaken unaccompanied, save for mothers with their single young. The cub rides about on its mother's back (or tail in the case of the pygmy anteater) for its first few months to a year. Interestingly, the position that the young anteater takes, while riding on the mother's back, causes the line on the juvenile to line up with the line on the mother, making the youngster virtually invisible. The silky anteater does not usually have any dark mark, but the fur closely resembles the silky look and texture of fake fur, and changes color with the light angle.
The anteater has no fixed home. They live in tropical and temperate climates, from Argentina northwards into Mexico. Edentates are not good at maintaining their body temperature. In the limbs and tails there are fusions of the veins and arteries, by means of which heat is transferred from the arteries, carrying warm blood to the limbs, to the veins.
Lesser Anteaters — Tamandua's — live in trees, using their tails to hang on. When on the ground, they walk clumsily, in a fashion much like the giant anteater. The name "Tamandua: is from the Tupi language, the language the Portuguese found when they arrrived in Brazil. It's the usual word for anteater today in Portuguese.
Anteaters are hunted for the tendons in their tails, which make good ropes, and they are also used by natives to rid houses of ants!
| March
1, 2005 Everybody is fine here. Last Saturday, we got a newcomer — an anteater again. Some nearby-Indians of the Yagua tribe killed her mother and brought the baby to us. She weighs only 4 kgs and wants to be on top of us the whole time — normally she would be riding on her mother's back — which isn't so nice as she uses her very sharp claws to climb up our legs . . . but I'm sure she'll learn soon not to use them with us anymore. I feed her every 3-4 hours with oats and milk, but besides we take her to antnests, so she learns to eat ants too. Best wishes Gudrun
March 3, 2005 Angelica (the three-toed sloth) is gone again — but with a purple back, so I hope nobody will see her as food, but instead bring her back to us if they see her. A student of mine wants to leave a baby woolly monkey with us, but I can only take it if we find a place for him when he is older: Woolly monkeys don't get on well with monkeys other than Howlers and Spider monkeys. Love, Gudrun
(Note: Gudrun will contact the owner of a monkey rescue center in the United Kingdom that may be able to help.) |
Amazon Animal Orphanage
Pilpintuwasi Butterfly Farm
www.AmazonAnimalOrphanage.org
pilpintuwasi@hotmail.com
063-23-2665
Padre Cocha
Iquitos, Peru