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Updated: May 2, 2025
There are several species, all of which are invested with a coat of mail, or a kind of plate armour resembling the covering of the pangolin, or scaly ant-eater, and the shell of the tortoise. This crust or shell covers the upper parts of the animal, and consists of four or five different parts or divisions.
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. Standing upon its hind-feet, and supporting itself also by the tail which it has already thrown around some branch the little ant-eater uses its fore-feet as hands to carry food to its mouth.
Likewise the manis, or great scaled ant-eater, who retires to his hole before break of day, is never met with by daylight. Indeed, I have had some trouble in persuading many persons in Ceylon that such an animal exists in the country.
The megatherium is described zoologically as having combined the characteristics of the armadillo, sloth, and ant-eater. In height it averaged eight feet; its feet were a yard in length; and its claws were of terrible strength; it was encased in an impenetrable scaly armour; and it lived upon roots. The mastodon was of the elephant kind.
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.
This was demonstrated the day he first met the great ant-eater a curious animal, black, with white stripes on its shoulders, and fully as large as Suma, his mother. The strange creature had a long, slender nose and a flat, bushy tail while its feet were armed with dagger-like claws six inches long.
If it is possible for a man to have two apples of his eye, Sammy was the other. He was a large, light-hearted dog with a white coat, an engaging expression, the tongue of an ant-eater, and a manner which was a happy blend of hurricane and circular saw. He had long legs, a tenor voice, and was apparently made of india-rubber.
No doubt it's a good thing to be brave, but you must manage to be less stupid when you are in the forests of the Terre-Chaude, unless you want to be devoured by a tiger, or scratched to pieces by an ant-eater." After listening to l'Encuerado's speech, Lucien scolded him for firing at the poor animal, and then joined us, close to the porcupine, which was dying.
At this the ant-eater jerked up its broad tail, and appeared to shelter itself as with an umbrella! Guapo then went towards it, and commenced driving it before him just as if it had been a sheep or goat, and in this manner he took it all the way to the house.
We then discovered the creature to be a huge ant-eater, which, though it had no teeth, was armed with formidable claws, with which it would inevitably have killed my brave dog had it caught him. A shot in the head from John's rifle laid it dead.
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