Animal · Brazil, Bolivia, Paraguay
Giant anteater
Myrmecophaga tridactyla — the name this animal has in the language scientists everywhere share.
The giant anteater walks slowly across South American grassland with its long nose near the ground, sniffing out hidden ant nests. It has no teeth at all. Instead a sticky tongue about 60 cm long shoots into the nest and flicks up to 150 times a minute.
Picture credit: Fernando Flores (CC BY-SA 2.0) · Anagoria (CC BY 3.0) · Wikimedia Commons
Where does the giant anteater live?
Home: grasslands, savannas and open woodland of South America.
In the wild it lives in these countries: Brazil, Bolivia, Paraguay, Argentina, Colombia, Venezuela, Peru, Guyana.
Conservation status from the IUCN: vulnerable.
The short profile
Fully grown: about 2 m from nose to tail tip. It weighs about 40 kilograms. On the menu: insects.
The story behind it
A giant anteater spends most of the day looking for food, and it finds it by smell rather than by sight. Its nose works far better than its small eyes, and it can sense a nest of ants buried under hard ground. When it finds one it tears the wall open with the huge claws on its front feet, then pushes in its narrow snout. It laps up ants for only a minute or two before moving on, so the colony survives and can be visited again. Because the claws are so long, the anteater cannot put its front paws down flat and walks on its knuckles instead. At night it curls up and pulls its bushy tail over itself like a blanket. Its body stays cooler than that of most mammals, at about 33 degrees, which saves energy on a diet of insects. A mother carries her single pup on her back for months, and the stripes on the pup line up with hers, so the two look like one animal.
Find it on the globe
Giant anteater is there as a tiny animated figure that breathes and looks around. From far away the planet is only a blue ball; detail arrives as you zoom in, and this one appears once you are close enough. Open it on the globe.
It sits at its real coordinates, not near them — the same numbers listed in the facts above. Switch off the layer for this kind of place and it disappears again; the buttons for that are down the right-hand edge.
Questions children ask
Does the anteater destroy the ant nest?
No. It feeds at one nest for only a minute or two and then walks on, because the soldier ants soon start to bite. The colony repairs the hole, and the anteater can come back weeks later.
Can a giant anteater defend itself?
Yes. If a jaguar or a puma comes too close, the anteater rears up on its back legs, leans on its tail and strikes out with its front claws. Hunters that size usually decide to look for an easier meal.
Is it really a kind of bear?
No, even though several languages call it one. Its closest relatives are sloths and armadillos, a family of animals that grew up only in the Americas.
Where these numbers come from
Every figure on this page was checked against public reference sources before publication. Where sources genuinely disagree, the text says so.
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