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Updated: June 20, 2025
Many kinds of reptiles, both snakes and lizards, are ant-eaters; and, what is strangest of all, there are insects that prey upon them! No wonder, then, with such a variety of enemies that the ants are kept within proper limits, and are not allowed to overrun the earth.
In all the divisions of animated nature there are ant-destroyers ant-eaters! To begin with the mammalia, man himself feeds upon them for there are tribes of Indians in South America, the principal part of whose food consists of dried termites, which they bake into a kind of "paste!"
But, beside these, insects for swallows, swifts, martins, shrikes, thrushes, orioles, sparrows, the beautiful trogans and jacamars, moles, shrews, hedgehogs, and a multitude of others, too numerous to mention, but not too numerous to eat. Ants, also, for the ant-eaters of America, the aard-vark of Africa, and the pangolin of Asia.
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 only really Edentata, i. e. toothless animals, amongst them are the ant-eaters, who, considering the nature of their food, are not much in want of teeth. To get on rapidly they catch them with their tongue; but what a tongue! Imagine a kind of long earthworm, lodged in a snout which is elongated like a bird's beak, and has a very small opening at the extremity.
For example, in Europe, Asia, and Africa, the large mammals are at present rhinoceroses, hippopotamuses, elephants, lions, tigers, oxen, horses, etc.; and if you examine the newest tertiary deposits, which contain the animals and plants which immediately preceded those which now exist in the same country, you do not find gigantic specimens of ant-eaters and kangaroos, but you find rhinoceroses, elephants, lions, tigers, etc., of different species to those now living, but still their close allies.
When we consider, further, that almost all other animals have in earlier ages been represented by allied yet distinct forms that, in the latter part of the tertiary period, Europe was inhabited by bears, deer, wolves, and cats; Australia by kangaroos and other marsupials; South America by gigantic sloths and ant-eaters; all different from any now existing, though intimately allied to them we have every reason to believe that the Orangutan, the Chimpanzee, and the Gorilla have also had their forerunners.
And yet the ants, in their thousands, are not much destroyed by the birds, not even by the ant-eaters, and they are dreaded by most stronger insects.
The Sloths belong to this group of mammalia; not that they have the slightest resemblance to the ant-eaters in any respect, but simply, as before stated, because they want the cutting teeth. They are not absolutely toothless, however, since they possess both canines and molars. With these they are enabled to masticate their food, which consists of the leaves and tender shoots of trees.
And there are pictures in all the numbers, of birds and ant-eaters and antelopes, and I don't know what. The Mono and the Quata live in the West Indies, I think. You see, I think the A's are rather good numbers; very likely, for there's America, and Asia, and Africa, and Arabia, and Abyssinia, and there'll be Australia before we come to the B's. Oh, Isaac! I do wish I could go round the world!"
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