Giant Anteater Facts
Giant Anteater Facts
1. Found in Central America (Mexico, Nicaragua, Costa Rica) and South America (Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Brazil, Peru, Paraguay, Argentina, Bolivia).
2. Giant Anteaters can live in grasslands, woodlands and rainforests.
3. The biggest threat comes from habitat loss. The habitat of the Giant Anteater is used by people for farming and development.
4. Giant Anteaters are hunted by Jaguars and Pumas, but its biggest enemy is people.
5. People hunt the Giant Anteater for food, or because they are a pest, or to catch and keep as a pet.
6. Giant Anteaters are also killed on roads or when the grassland they live in is burnt by farmers.
7. Giant Anteaters are quiet animals and mostly just snuffle at each other, but if two males get into a fight they may bellow quite loudly.
8. Giant Anteaters eat ants. They also eat termites and some other insects. The giant anteater, from its name, usually can consume up to 3000 insects a day, including ants and termites. They have no teeth, but they swallow small stones with the insects and this probably helps them grind up their food.
9. Strong claws used to rip open ant and termite mounds.
10.They use their long sticky tongues to ‘lick-up’ insects. All giant anteaters have an extremely long tongue that reaches an amazing 24 inches in length. The tongue is coated with large quantities of saliva, which enables them to consume large amounts of insects in one meal.
11. Anteaters are about the size of a German shepherd dog. It’s covered with stiff, straw-like hair which grows up to 40 cm long on the tail. After giving birth to just one baby, the female will carry it on her back for nearly a year. When it is strong enough the baby will get down to walk around on its own sometimes.
12. It can take 3 years for a Giant Anteater to reach full size and weight (to ‘grow up’), and they live for 16 years.
13. Giant Anteaters are quite good swimmers.
14. If they are threatened they will run away, or stand up on their back legs, using their tail as a prop, and defend themselves with their strong front legs and claws. At one time, anteaters were believed to be extremely dangerous and were accused of killing dogs and cattle. It was later recognized that this was a false accusation. Anteaters are harmless unless threatened by predators.
15. Anteaters are thought to be one of the first groups of mammals to have reached South America.
16. By their external anatomy alone, males and females are hard to tell apart from one another.
17. Anteaters are mainly diurnal but are found to be nocturnal in densely populated areas.
18. The tongue of an anteater has been found to move at the rate of 160 strokes per minute during a single feeding.
19. The best sense of the anteater is its sense of smell, as a fact, their sense of smell is 40 times more acute than that of humans.
20. Because of their large bodies and slow manner, anteaters generally stay on the ground, however, they may climb trees when cornered by a predator.
21. These large mammals spend the equivalent of 15 hours a day sleeping.
22. Out of all terrestrial animals, anteaters have one of the lowest recorded body temperatures. Their average temperature only reaches 32.7 degrees Celcius/91 degrees Fahrenheit.
23. These amazing creatures travel around 46 feet per minute.
24. In order to conserve their food supply, the anteater will eat only 140 insects from each mound at a time.
25. When giving birth, the female will stand upright using her tail as a balance.
26. Anteaters bear a single young at a time.
27. As soon as she gives birth, the young will climb directly onto the mother’s back where it will remain for up to one year while it continues through its growth process. The young will remain here even though they are able to walk and venture out on their own at 4 weeks of age.
28. The mother will suckle her young for up to 6 months.
29. Young anteaters do not feed independently until they are 2 years of age.
30. Xenarthrans do not show eyeshine at night and as a result are frequent victims of roadkill.
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