THE ANT BEAR 
present powerlessness of zoologists to do any better. 
They fit in nowhere else, and in the meantime the group 
Edentata may be retained as an assemblage of creatures 
which admittedly require sorting out when we are able 
to do it. 
THE AMERICAN ANT-EATER 
One of the mest remarkable types of animal life which 
frequent the gloomy forests of South America is the 
great ant-bear, Myrmecophaga jubata, the maned ant- 
eater as it might be better called, in deference to its 
Linnean name. Claws, tail and tongue, are its most 
striking attributes, and are most intimately concerned 
with its mode of life. It is a large and not uncomely 
beast, of a greyish black colour, with a conspicuous stripe 
over the shoulder, a small head at the end of a longish 
neck, and with a great bushy tail, which is carried in an 
arched fashion. Including this tail the ant-bear gets to 
be as long as seven feet, and the two sexes are of the same 
build and colour. The claws are so long and stout that 
the beast has to walk upon the sides of them. Their 
massive character is in association with the fact that the 
animal tears open the high ant-hills inhabited by the 
termites, or white ants of South America, which are 
often constructed with great solidity. The emerging 
ants are then licked up by the extraordinarily long and 
thin tongue, aided by a copious secretion of saliva. In 
most mammals the salivary glands are limited to the 
head and throat. But in Myrmecophaga these glands 
extend right over the breast, and are thus in a position 
to produce an enormous quantity of the necessary bird- 
lime for the capture of its prey. Like Mamis of the East, 
Myrmecophaga has a mouth as toothless as that of the 
crone. But whatitlacks in offensiveness in the mouth 
itmakes up for by its claws, which can rip open any dog 
inastrokeortwo. Their more effective use as an instru- 
Z.G. 129 K 
