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Updated: May 2, 2025
Although Leon had never seen the creature before, he had read about it, and had also seen pictures of it. He knew it, therefore, at a glance. That proboscis-looking snout was not to be mistaken. It could belong to no other creature than the tamanoir, or great ant-eater, by the people of South America called the ant-bear.
The feet of the pengolin are armed with powerful claws, which in walking they double in, like the ant-eater of Brazil. These they use in extracting their favourite food from ant-hills and decaying wood. When at liberty, they burrow in the dry ground to a depth of seven or eight feet, where they reside in pairs, and produce annually one or two young.
L'Encuerado had once been nearly throttled by an ant-eater, and hence it would have been of no use for me to have attempted to prevent his shooting it. "Do not come near, Tata Sumichrast," cried the Indian; "these beasts die very hard, and I still bear the marks of their claws on my skin. Let me just tickle him up with the point of my machete."
On it went with the stealthy pace of a cat about to pounce on an unwary bird or mouse. It did not make the slightest noise, carefully avoiding every branch in its way. True, after his late adventure with the ant-eater, was less disposed than usual to seek an encounter, and I was therefore able to keep him from dashing forward as he otherwise would have done.
When seizing a deer or horse, it leaps on the animal's back, and grasping the head with its claws, wrenches it back till the vertebrae of the neck are broken. There are but two animals who do not fear the jaguar. The great ant-eater is defended from the monster's attacks by its shaggy, thick coat.
Manoel and Benito had gone shooting in the neighborhood, and brought back some feathered game, which was well received in the larder. At the same time they had got an animal of whom a naturalist would have made more than did the cook. It was a creature of a dark color, something like a large Newfoundland dog. "A great ant-eater!" exclaimed Benito, as he threw it on the deck of the jangada.
In short, so great a pest had the hyenas grown to be, that it became necessary to adopt some mode of destroying them. It was not easy to get a shot at them. During the day they were wary, and either hid themselves in caves of the cliff or in the burrows of the ant-eater.
This is a great deal farther from us than even the long string which serves as a tongue to the ant-eater; and you feel at once that we are getting among strangers. With respect to teeth, I have now a melancholy piece of news to tell you. We have done with them; we have seen the last of incisors, canines, and molars, henceforth you will hear no more about those valuable instruments.
We saw many small animals, such as porcupines, a scaly ant-eater, and a wild pig, piebald in color and with long curved tusks. Once, through a break in the trees, we saw a clear shoulder of green hill some distance away, and across this a large dun-colored animal was traveling at a considerable pace.
It is unfortunate that we have no knowledge of the Miocene mammalian fauna of the Australian and Austro-Columbian provinces; but, seeing that not a trace of a Platyrrhine Ape, of a Procyonine Carnivore, of a characteristically South-American Rodent, of a Sloth, an Armadillo, or an Ant-eater has yet been found in Miocene deposits of Arctogaea, I cannot doubt that they already existed in the Miocene Austro-Columbian province.
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