Episode 065: Animals that eat ants
We’re not looking at just any old insectivores in this episode, we’re looking at the big three of ant-eating mammals: the giant anteater, the aardvark, and the pangolin! A giant anteater and baby: Teeny anteater mouth alert! Also long tongue: An aardvark walking with style: An aardvark. Look at that tongue! And those claws! An Indian pangolin. Please do not eat: A pangolin ball. Please do not kick: Save the Pangolins organization Show transcript: Welcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I’m your host, Kate Shaw. This week we’re going to learn about the anteater, the aardvark, and the pangolin, all of them specialized eaters of ants. Are they related? How do we tell them apart? The anteater is a South and Central American animal related to sloths and, more distantly, armadillos. The aardvark is an African animal related to several rodent-like animals including the golden mole, which is not a mole, and the elephant shrew, which is neither an elephant nor a shrew. Although, as it happens, the elephant shrew is actually related to the elephant. So is the aardvark, although these connections are pretty darn distant. The pangolin is an Asian and African animal that’s not very closely related to anything. Let’s start with the giant anteater. The giant anteater can grow over seven feet long if you include the tail, or more than 2 meters. It’s brown and gray with markings that look like go-faster stripes. Its head is small and elongated. You know how a cartoon character can cram its head into a bottle and its head stays bottle-shaped? It kind of looks like the giant anteater did that. Its snout is shaped like a tube, with nostrils and a tiny mouth at the end. It can’t open its jaws very far. It has a short upright mane along its spine all the way down its back, which blends with its bushy tail. Its tail is so awesomely furry that when an anteater sleeps, it covers its body with its tail like a blanket. Anteaters eat ants, although they also love termites and will eat other small insects and insect larvae. The giant anteater uses its massive front claws to dig into anthills. Then it flicks its tongue really fast, catching insects with a combination of tiny hooklets on the tongue and sticky saliva. An anteater’s tongue is over two feet long, or 60 cm, so long that when the anteater isn’t actually eating, the tongue rolls up at the back of its skull. The base of its tongue is attached not to its throat but to its sternum, also called the breastbone. A feeding anteater eats as many insects as it can catch in a minute or two, then moves on to find a new anthill. It does this to avoid as many stings and bites as possible. To conserve energy, the anteater’s body temperature is low to start with and drops when the animal is asleep. The anteater doesn’t have teeth. It crushes insects against the top of its mouth before swallowing them, and its stomach acts like a bird’s crop. The anteater may deliberately eat sand or grit the way birds do to help pulverize the insects it’s eaten. Its eyesight isn’t very good so it hunts mostly by scent. The giant anteater knuckle-walks on its forepaws because its front claws are so big. When it feels threatened, it will rear up on its hind legs and spread its forelegs so it can slash with its claws. Anteaters can kill jaguars and other predators, including humans. Occasionally anteaters will fight over territory, especially males. Sometimes during a fight, one anteater will climb on the other one and ride it around, which probably really annoys the anteater that’s being ridden. The female anteater has one baby at a time, which rides on its mother’s back until it’s big enough to keep up with her on its own. Its markings blend with its mother’s so predators don’t notice it. So that’s the giant anteater. Now let’s look at the aardvark. The aardvark is about the same size as the anteater and also eats ants, termites,