■ THE GREAT ANTEATER 209 



A pair of young anteaters living in the Regent's 

 Park collection in 1904 were very active and playful. 

 Fast asleep at 10 a.m., by mid-day they had become 

 active, tumbling about in clumsy sport as they sawed 

 the air with their huge claws and made absurd grabs 

 at each other's ultra- Roman noses. One of them 

 played kitten-like with its comrade's tail ; the two 

 raised their uncouth heads high in the air and padded 

 about their cage, the shaggy coats rustling sharply 

 on the carpeted hay. They took milk readily, 

 churning it into froth as the long purplish tongues 

 flickered wormlike in and out of the basin. ^ Driven 

 back by their keeper when he entered the cage, they 

 stood solemnly swaying their bodies to and fro like 

 bears, or indeed like elephants, to which beasts 

 their long- nightmare snouts and habit of blowing- 

 audibly gave them a superficial resemblance.^ 



Specimens less than one month old are seldom, if 

 ever, brought over alive, so that naturalists in Europe 

 have little opportunity of studying the habits of very 

 young individuals. A photograph of Herr Nill's 

 anteater at Stuttgart, taken at two days old and 

 exhibited on January 19th, 1897 ^^ ^ meeting of 

 the Zoological Society, excellently rendered the 

 bird-like head, bear-like body, and plumeless tail of 



1 Sir Walter Elliott, in describing a short-tailed pangolin "anteater" 

 {Manis pcntcular.tyla) when drinking, remarked that it darted out its 

 tongue so rapidly "as to fill the water with froth." 



2 The worthy Pei^e d' Abbeville (" Mission en I'lsle de Maragnon ") 

 states tliat the " barbari " described the anteater as a beast as big as a 

 horse, with a pigs head, dog's ears and a proboscis — not so bad for Indians ! 



