Survival traits
Getting Food
•Long tubular snouts: helps to get into ant's hills and termite's nests.
•Large claws: rips open termite's & ant's nests.Adorn its from Marked as vulnerable
-small limbs. Protects its claws by walking on its knuckles because the ground is soft.
•Long, skinny and sticky tongues: helps to gather the tiny insects.
-Extremely strong smell. Can small for their prey for several miles. Smell is 40X better that humans'.
Protection from predators
•Strong front limbs: provides some difference against predators(Puma & Jaguar).
Random Facts
Giant Anteaters
•Importance: control amount of ants and termites( protecting trees and make sure termites do not destroy the forest).
•Their average lifespan is about 25 years in captivity.
•They are marked as vulnerable animals
-food to predators
-often hit by a car
-small
The End
Social Structure & Reproduction
•Social Structure: Solitary, except for mother and their young.
•Reproduction
-After gestation of about 6 month, gives birth to one offspring.
-The baby is weaned in few month.
-Rides on mother back up to a year.
-Remains with the mother up to 2 years, or until mother becomes pregnant.
•They produce one offspring each breeding season.
•Giant anteaters reach sexual maturity between 2 and 4 years of age.
How Giant Anteaters ganged over time
Some anteaters have longer snouts than others, so they have a better chance of getting their food. Those anteaters were selected by being better able to survive eating ants and thus they were more reproductively successful. The alleles for this successful traits were passed to progeny who had the same traits. Over time the snout of anteaters changed, adapted, better to the way they made their ant eating living. The environment selected Giant Anteaters.
•Body temperature between 32 and 35 ºF.
They need worm environment.