Marcia Rose, age 14, of Wichita, Kansas, for her question:
Does the great anteater have another name
This fellow without a doubt is one of the oddest mammal animals in the whole world. He is a night prowling native of the New World tropics, so people rarely get a chance to marvel at him. The great anteater has several aliases but he could never be mistaken for any other animal.
The Edentata order of mammals includes the armor plated armadillos, the slow pokey sloths and an assortment of furry anteaters. The name of this order means "the toothless ones" and the great anteater has not a single tooth in his long, thin head. He is also known as the ant bear but not because he looks like a bear. His shaggy body just happens to be about the size of a smallish bear. Scientists label him Myrmecophaga ubata. The genus name Myrmeco~hp aga is coined from the Greek word for "ants." The species name ubata refers to his hairy mane.
The great anteater, alias the ant bear, is at home in the forests and jungle swamps of Central and South America and all the way from Guatemala to Paraguay. He stands only two feet high, but his extraordinary body is eight feet long. His thin head is one foot long and half of his total length is a very bushy tail. The long claws on his stubby legs are curved inward and the great .anteater seems to walk on his knuckles. He walks with tail . straight out behind him and its grizzly hairs are almost long enough to brush the ground.
The general color of his shaggy coat is gray with a few surprising markings. The furry sleeves on his front legs are patched with brown and white. He wears a ,jet black bib edged with white around his throat. and it reaches back in a tapering scarf over each shoulder. His long, thin nozzle ends in a round mouth, no wider than a pencil. At the other end of the strange snout he has a pair of little round ears and a pair of squinty little eyes. A bristly mane runs gracefully from his head all the way down his spine to m'aet the bushy, bushy tail.
The amazing fellow sleeps all day long in some quiet corner, rolled up tight in a shaggy ball with his tail wrapped sensibly around his delicate nozzle. At night he prowls but not, as a rule, for ants. His favorite food is the pale termites that live in high mounds of hardened dirt. The anteater uses his saber claws to rip these apartment houses to shambles. The terrified termites scatter and scuttle and the anteater lashes out his long, thin, tacky tongue. When the sticky lash is covered with trapped termites, the hungry anteater pulls it inside and swallows a mouthful.
As a baby, the great anteater is an only child but he has two devoted parents. He stays with the family at least until his first birthday, often riding around on mama's shaggy back. As a rule, when he is a year old, the mother bears another baby and it is time for our Junior to go off and find a wife for himself.
The great anteater is by nature a pacifist. He prefers to avoid a fight and he can run as fast as a man. He also can swim across a river. But if he is cornered, the big, strong fellow is no coward especially if Junior is threatened. He rears up on his haunches, facing his enemy, and lashes out'with his mighty talons. Sometimes he grabs his foe in his powerful arms, ripping his back with his saber claws and the gashing wounds may be fatal.