Top 10 facts about anteaters

LONDON Zoo will be giving Tammy, the tree-climbing anteater, her own minder for the first of the Zoo Lates at Regent's Park tonight to safeguard her from her own clumsiness. For details: www.zsl.org/zoolates.

1. Anteaters' tongues are coated with sticky saliva, which helps them to bring ants and termites to their mouths.
2. The giant anteater can eat 30,000 insects a day.
3. Although similar in appearance and diet, anteaters and aardvarks are not related...
4. ...and unlike aardvarks, anteaters have no teeth.
5. The order Pilosa comprises anteaters and sloths. The word comes from the Latin for 'hairy'.
6. Anteaters form the suborder Vermilingua, which means 'worm tongue'.

7. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, next year will be the 250th anniversary of the first appearance in English of the word anteater.
8. The term anteater is often applied to numbats, echidnas and pangolins as well as aardvarks yet none of them is a true anteater.
9. The giant anteater was named Myrmecophaga tridactyla, meaning a three-fingered eater of ants, by Carl Linnaeus in 1758.
10. There is no generally agreed collective noun for anteaters, which are solitary animals, however sources suggest a parade, a flock or a herd.

 

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