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The very last time I visited the nest and became absorbed in a line of incoming ants, I heard the shrill squeaking of an angry hummingbird overhead. I looked up, and there, ten feet above, was a furry tamandua anteater slowly climbing a straight purpleheart trunk, while around and around his head buzzed and swore the little fury a pinch of cinnamon feathers, ablaze with rage.
While the vast citadels of the white ant formed on the ground are attacked by the great ant-eater, the too great increase of the arborial termites is kept under by three smaller species, formed to live among the branches of the trees. The tamandua is seen climbing the loftiest monarchs of the forest in search of its insect prey. It is about the size of a cat.
The people of the neighbourhood had sold me all the fowls they could spare; I had not yet learned to eat the stale and stringy salt-fish which is the staple food in these places, and for several days I had lived on rice-porridge, roasted bananas, and farinha. Florinda asked me whether I could eat Tamandua.
In South America concealing coloration plays no more part in the lives of the adult deer, the tamandua, the tapir, the peccary, the jaguar, and the puma than it plays in Africa in the lives of such animals as the zebra, the sable antelope, the wildebeeste, the lion, and the hunting hyena. Next day we spent ascending the Sao Lourenco.
It is, therefore, a more active creature, and stands better upon its limbs. Its fur is short and silky, but the tail is nearly naked, and, as already stated, highly prehensile, although it does not sleep hanging by the tail as some other animals do. The tamandua is usually of a dull straw-colour, although it varies in this respect, so that several species have been supposed to exist.
Several of our companions had had dogs killed by these ant-eaters; and we came across one man with a very ugly scar down his back, where he had been hit by one, which charged him when he came up to kill it at close quarters. As soon as we saw the giant tamandua we pushed off in a rowboat, and landed only a couple of hundred yards distant from our clumsy quarry.
The tamandua has sometimes been called tridactyla, or the "three-toed ant-eater," because it has only three claws upon each of its fore-feet, whereas the tamanoir is provided with four. This one has only two claws on each fore-foot, hence its specific name. It is a very small creature not larger than the common grey squirrel with a prehensile tail like the tamandua.
It is a very small creature not larger than the common grey squirrel with a prehensile tail like the tamandua. The tail, however, is not entirely naked only on the under side near the point. It is not so good a walker as the three-toed kind, though more active on its feet than the tamanoir.
Indeed, it seems hard to believe that in their ordinary environments such color schemes as the bright red of the marsh-deer, the black of the black jaguar, and the black with white stripes of the great tamandua, are not positive detriments to the wearers. Yet such is evidently not the case.
The tamandua is much less than the tamanoir, being only three and a half feet in length, while the latter is over seven. The former is of a stouter build, with neither so long a snout in proportion, nor such claws. The claws, moreover, are made for tree-climbing, and are not so much in the way when the animal walks on the ground.
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