Anteaters are really cool. Weirdly I've encountered at least a handful of people who believed that anteaters are completely defenseless, like that you could fight it unarmed and be fine. I don't know why they believed this, but they did
I had the pleasure of seeing one of these gentle giants in the wild here in Brazil, in Goiás, in the Cerrado, where I live. We call the giant anteater "Tamanduá Bandeira" for it's flag like tail and fur. Such fascinating animals to study!
In fact, everyone knows myrmecophagous placental mammals are not a monophyletic group, which is why anteaters are certainly not related to armadillos, aardvarks, and pangolins, instead anteaters are more closely related to sloths, since both sloths and anteaters are more similar than we think, which is why they are grouped together within the order Pilosa, while armadillos (family Dasypodidae) are the only extant family of the order Cingulata, the aardvark (Orycteropus afer) is the only extant species of the order Tubulidentata, and pangolins are placental mammals that comprise the order Pholidota, while Cingulata is classified with Pilosa into the superorder Xenarthra, the latter two orders Tubulidentata and Pholidota are not closely related to the former nor are they closely related to each other, the aardvark is a member of the superorder Afrotheria making it more closely related to elephants, sirenians, and hyraxes, while pangolins are part of the superorder Laurasiatheria, specifically sharing a more recent common ancestor with the carnivorans.
Wow, you guys have really have a vivid imagination!🤯I had to watch the video for the 3rd time before seeing the pandas face🤣 Thanks for the video, learned a lot!😁
I imagine it's probably an individual thing and highly subjective based on many variables (such as if babies are involved), but it's likely they would run or defend depending on the situation - fight, flight, or freeze kind of scenario
The anteater's tongue moves so fast that the ants don't have any time to react before they are sent down his throat. And once his stomach is full of ants, it grinds them up using tiny stones and its hard rough walls!
That is so disgusting. If I was the cute Cougar, I'd not hunt an ant eater. How don't the ants damage the creature's tongue even if he avoids stings to the rest of the body by not staying in one place?
Also aardvarks are not anteaters and evolved independently with them, aardvarks are more closely related to hyraxes, elephants, and sirenians while anteaters are more closely related to sloths.