Anteater

“ The little Two-toed Anteater (Cyclopes didactylus) , [189] hardly larger than a rat, is exclusively arboreal and has a prehensile tail, like so many other South American mammals. Sloths and anteaters are forest animals and are not found west of the Andes or south of Paraguay. ”

“ It strikes suddenly and fast with its long, curved scimitar-sharp claws, and always aims at the stomach which it rips open. No other creature will venture near a tamandua, except by accident. Probably it is voiceless, although natives have attributed to the sinister little anteater a peculiarly weird cry heard in the moonlit jungle. ”

“ At the end of the sixties no zoological garden contained a specimen of the South African anteater. I do not know whether any such institution contains one now. However, a very liberal price was offered for a live specimen. This extraordinary creature is almost strictly nocturnal in its habits, and is consequently extremely difficult to capture. One day a man with whom I was acquainted was riding through the veld a few miles from his camp. To his surprise he noticed a large ant-eater. ”

“ Their apparatus for suckling the young is primitive. There are no teats, and the milk is forced by the mother through simple channels upon the breast, from which it is licked by the young. The Anteater develops her eggs in a pouch. They illustrate a very early stage in the development of a mammal from a reptile; and one is almost tempted to see in their timorous burrowing habits a reminiscence of the impotence of the early mammals after their premature appearance in the Triassic. ”

“ Though the doe shivered at the thought of visiting a man who made his living on the slaughter of deer, she was willing to risk anything for her offspring. However, she had never met the man personally, and she thought it best to ask for a letter of introduction from the Anteater, who was supposed to be on very good terms with all the human kind.
It was night; and the panthers and wildcats were rampant through all the forest ”

“ The Rice-ants lived under the ground, and with them it went no better. For whenever they came out, Anteater visited them and took them out sack and pack. The Wagtail-ants fled to the trees, but there on many occasions sat Centipede waiting for them, or the birds gobbled them up. The Gray-ants had intended to save themselves from extermination by taking to flight, but this also availed them nothing, because the Lizard, the Hunting-spider, and the birds went a great deal faster than they. ”

“ The second family is that of the anteaters, Myrmecophagidae, distinguished from the last by the absence of teeth, the elongated tongue and the long tail. The long and slender head has a tubular mouth, with a small terminal aperture through which the worm-like tongue, covered with the sticky secretion of the enormous submaxillary salivary glands, is rapidly protruded in feeding, and withdrawn again with the adhering particles of food which are then sucked into the gullet. In the foot the third toe is greatly developed, and has a long sickle-like claw ”

“ Kükenthal has found germs of teeth in Whales, and Röse in the Oriental Manis. The loss of the teeth in these cases seems to have some relation to the nature of the food. In ant-eating mammals, as in the Anteaters and Echidna, the ants are licked up by the long and viscid tongue, and require no mastication. Yet it must be remembered that Orycteropus is also an anteater, like the Marsupial Myrmecobius, both of which genera have teeth. ”

“ They were such things as army ants six feet long; anteaters looking like ambling locomotives with hairy hides and noses; lumbering sloths vast as a houses on legs, sleepy and comic as ever, but terrifyingly destructive; jaguars like trucks and trailers; centipedes with stingers over their backs that would reach a man in a third-story window; wasps and bees like buzzards. ”

“ The rhinoceros, hippopotamus, tapir, and musk, he classes as anomalous. Of the unguiculate animals, some are ruminant, with two claws only, as the camel; others are carnivorous, with more numerous claws, as cats, dogs, polecats. Some again are herbivorous, with two long front teeth, as hares; and others are toothless, [Pg 173] as the anteater. Other animals of this kind are furnished with wings, and have a short muzzle, as the bats; while some are without wings, as the sloth. Tortoises, lizards, and serpents, bring up the rear. ”

“ This state of affairs is to be found in the African species only. This structure is not comparable, as it has been said to be, with abdominal ribs such as those of the reptile Hatteria.
These animals are mainly anteaters. The Japanese have a curious legend as to the method adopted for the capture of ants, which is related by Dr. Jentink in his monograph of the genus. The Manis "erects his scales and feigns to be dead; the ants creep between the erected scales, after which the anteater again closes its scales and enters the water ”

“ Kings upon their thrones, devisers of false doctrines, crooked politicians, grafters, con men, card sharks, thimbleriggers—all these are anteaters battening on the substance of simple-hearted, earnest-minded ants. The ant believes what you tell him ”

“ For so surely as we find ants, there, too, do we find the anteaters. You behold the ants bustling about, making themselves leaner trying to make them-selves fatter; terrifically busied with their small affairs; hiving up sustenance against the hard winter ”

“ Two families belong to the Old World, one in the Orient and another in South Africa, but all the other edentates are American. The Oriental one includes most of the "pangolins," or scaly anteaters, which are covered from head to foot in a coat of mail formed of overlapping horny plates, and can roll themselves into a ball that will defy any jaws not big enough to tear them to pieces ”

“ Without ants the anteaters would have to live upon each other—which would be bad for them but better for the rest of creation. War is the greatest of the anteaters—it feeds upon the bodies of the ants. ”

“ Even in the whalebone whales their germs are formed in the same manner and at the same period of life as in other mammals, and even become partially calcified, although they never rise above the gums, and completely disappear before birth. In the American anteaters and the pangolins among the Edentata no traces of teeth have been found at any age. ”

“ A single bite from a jaguar, or the stroke of his paw, would fracture an ant-eater's skull before it had time to turn round; for the movements of this edentate quadruped are as sluggish as those of the toothed carnivorous tyrant are rapid. [Pg 228]
As seen in its handsome and roomy cage, the ant-eater gives us an impression of dulness and stupidity; and always smelling and listening and looking at the door where its keeper introduces its food, its mind, when awake, appears to be constantly occupied about "creature comforts." ”

“ The patricians, on the other hand, are rich, having palaces in the ant-hills, and parks, where flies are reared for their food and sport.
The ants display the tenderest regard for their offspring; and to the care bestowed upon the training of the young they attribute their national greatness. It is astonishing to see the neuters watching over the young. In place of sending—as some of our Parisian sparrows do—their callow-brood to be nursed by birds of prey, they themselves tend the orphans. ”

“ The ant-bear or great ant-eater, a stout and powerful animal measuring six feet from the snout to the end of the tail, also ranged these prairies; but although his flesh is well-flavored and easily procured, it is never used for food, owing to his repulsive appearance. “He is chiefly found in the inmost recesses of the forest, and seems partial to the low and swampy parts near creeks, where the trocly-tree grows. There{257}
he goes up and down in quest of ants, of which there is never the least scarcity, so that he soon obtains a sufficient supply of food with very little trouble. ”

“ They are covered with long, coarse, gray-and-black hair, resembling the moss of the trees in which they live, for these animals are arboreal, while the other members of the order burrow.
Ant-eaters, of which there are several varieties, are covered with spines like the hedge-hog. Even the long, rough tongue and palate are provided with the sharp little spines with which they spear and hold their prey. Their claws also are fitted for digging into the ant hills, where the food is obtained. They are very inferior mammals, but have their place, and are useful in destroying noxious insects. ”

“ The Great Ant-eater has a curved head which is drawn out into a slender snout, no teeth, a long, slender tongue, a great bushy tail, and claws that neither allow the creature to burrow in the earth nor climb into trees, but which are admirably adapted to tear an ant-hill into fragments. ”

“ Peacefully buried in the sand of his lair, the Ant-lion devours his astutely-captured prey. When the meal is over, there remains a dry carcass, which must be thrown away, for, if left in the funnel, it might frighten any game in future and betray the hunter in his ambush. A jerk of the shovel, that is to say, a toss of the flat head, flings it outside the hole. ”

“ The beetles in many of their movements exactly resemble the ants, and their mode of requesting food, by stroking the ants in certain ways, is quite ant-like. So reciprocal is the friendship, that if an ant is in want of food the beetle will in its turn disgorge for the benefit of its host. The young of the beetles are reared in the nests by the ants, who attend to them as carefully as they do to their own young. The beetles are, however, fond of the ants’ larvæ as food, and, indeed, eat them to a very large extent, even when their own young are receiving food from the ants. ”

“ The horns of the cow, ox, sheep, antelope, and goat are permanent. If by any accident they are lost, they are not renewed; but the deer family shed their horns, which indeed, are not properly called horns, but antlers. Antlers are a horny growth, large and branching, divided into what are called tines. Up to a certain age these antlers grow, fall off, and are renewed every year, and there is no mammal peculiarity more wonderful than the rapid growth of these large frontal ornaments. In many of the deer species the male alone wears the antlers. ”

“ The creature lives in the tree-tops and is diurnal in habits. It moves along the branches with great rapidity, either in an upright position or inverted like a sloth, the prehensile tail being used constantly. Ants form the food, and as these ascend even the highest trees, the little ant-eater has a never-failing and abundant supply; they are gathered up hurriedly as the little creature moves quickly along.
One day an army of carnivorous ants invaded our quarters while we were busily occupied preparing the specimens collected during the morning. ”

“ He forms, with astonishing labour and perseverance, a pit in the shape of a funnel, in a dry sandy soil, under some old wall or other spot protected from the wind. His pit being finished, he buries himself among the sand at the bottom, leaving only his horns visible, and thus waits patiently for his prey. When an ant or any other small insect happens to walk on the edge of the hollow, it forces down some of the particles of sand, which gives the ant-lion notice of its presence. ”

“ Ants especially become its prey, whence its name of Ant-lion. Towards the month of July, the larvæ make themselves a spherical cocoon, mixed with grains of sand, in which they are transformed into pupæ which are hatched towards the end of August. The perfect ant-lions diffuse an odour of roses; their flight, which is weak, distinguishes them from the dragon-flies. We meet in the south of France with a very beautiful species of Ant-lion, the Myrmeleo libelluloides (Fig. 404) ; its larva can move forwards, and does not dig itself a funnel. ”

“ Both Doña Isidora and the little Leona remained watching with increased interest. They were very anxious to witness the result. They were not kept long in suspense. I have already stated that many ants were crawling about. There were dozens of them “quatering” the ground in every direction in search of their own prey; and they left not an inch of it unsearched. At last one was seen to approach the trap of the ant-lion. Curiosity brings it to the very edge of that terrible pit-fall. ”

“ Availing himself of his power of throwing sand with his head, the ant-lion jerks some in the neighbourhood of the trespasser, and continues to do so until the victim is brought to the bottom of the pit and into the very jaws of its destroyer; then there is no further hope of escape; the mandibles close, empale their prey, and do not relax their hold till the body of the victim is exhausted of its juices. ”

“ The other is of the same size, but dingy brown in colour, and with hair of a coarser kind. These little ant-eaters both sleep through the day, curled up in the cavity of a tree, or in some fork of the branches, and only display their activity by night.
Thus it is that the ants have no chance of escaping from their numerous enemies. On the earth they are attacked and destroyed by the great ant-eater, in the trees by his brother with the four curving claws. By day one species preys upon them,—by night, another. Go where they will, there is a foe to fall upon them. ”

“ Each circle is smaller than the last, until the pit is like an inverted cone, and the ant-lion lies buried at the bottom, only his forceps being visible. When an ant has fallen headlong down into the pit it makes frantic efforts to escape, and if the ant-lion sees that it is likely to get beyond his reach, he then with his forceps flings some sand at it with such unerring aim the poor victim is sure to roll over and over until it reaches the jaws of its captor, who feasts upon it and then flings the remains of the body out of the pit. ”