Giant anteater

The giant anteater is a wonderfully strange-looking animal with a very long nose, a big bushy tail, and a coat of grey fur with bold black-and-white stripes across its shoulders. It lives in the grasslands and forests of Central and South America, and it is the biggest of all the anteaters.

As its name tells you, this animal loves to eat ants and termites. It has a brilliant tongue that can be about 60 centimetres long, longer than your arm. The tongue is covered in sticky spit, and it flicks in and out very fast to gather up thousands of tiny insects.

Giant anteaters have strong front legs and big curved claws. They use these claws to gently open up an ant or termite nest, take a quick snack, and then move on to the next one. Because they never stay long at one nest, the insect homes are not destroyed and can be visited again another day. Anteaters have no teeth, so they simply swallow their little meals whole.

A mother anteater usually has one baby at a time. The tiny pup climbs straight onto her back after it is born and holds on tight. It travels everywhere with her for months, and its stripy fur lines up so neatly with its mother’s that the baby is very hard to see riding along.

Giant anteaters have become rarer in some places, mostly because the wild grasslands they roam are being turned into farms, and because they can be hurt by grass fires and busy roads. Many parks now protect them, giving these gentle, long-nosed animals plenty of space to snuffle for their insect dinners.