The Silky Anteaters Found In Guyana Are The Smallest Anteaters In The World!

The silky anteaters are the smallest of all known anteaters and are also known as the pygmy anteater. It is a species of anteater in the genus Cyclopes, the only living genus in the family Cyclopedidae. This species can be found in southern Mexico, and Central and South America. Silky anteaters are nocturnal and arboreal, found in lowland rainforests with continuous canopy, where they can move to different places without the need to descend from trees.

Features Of The Silky Anteater

• Colour – They have dense and soft fur, which ranges from grey to yellowish in colour, with a silvery sheen. Many subspecies have darker, often brownish, streaks, and paler underparts or limbs. The eyes are black, and the soles of the feet are red.
• Claws – The scientific name translates roughly as “two-toed circle-foot”, and refers to the presence of two claws on the forefeet, and their ability to almost encircle a branch to which the animal is clinging. The claws are present on the second and third toes, with the latter being much the larger. The fourth toe is very small, and lacks a claw, while the other two toes are vestigial or absent, and are not visible externally.
• Hind Feet – The hind feet have four toes of equal length, each with long claws, and a vestigial hallux that is not externally visible.
• Ribs – The ribs are broad and flat, overlapping to form an internal armoured casing that protects the chest.
• Length & Weight – Adults have a total length ranging from 36 to 45 cm (14 to 18 in), including a tail 17 to 24 cm (6.7 to 9.4 in) long, and weigh from 175 to 400 g (6.2 to 14.1 oz).

Tip: Silky anteaters are the smallest living anteaters, and have proportionately shorter faces and larger crania than other species.

Scientific Classification Of The Silky Anteater

Silky Anteater – Cyclopes didactylus [Scientific name]

• Kingdom: Animalia
• Phylum: Chordata
• Class: Mammalia
• Order: Pilosa
• Family: Cyclopedidae
• Genus: Cyclopes
• Species: C. didactylus

Habitat Of The Silky Anteater

Silky anteaters are found from Oaxaca and southern Veracruz in Mexico, through Central America (except El Salvador), and south to Ecuador, and northern Peru, Bolivia, and Brazil. Silky anteaters are also found on the island of Trinidad. They are also found in South America, Guyana. They inhabit a range of different forest types, including semi-deciduous, tropical evergreen, and mangrove forests, from sea level to 1,500 m (4,900 ft).

Diet Of The Silky Anteater

The silky anteater is a slow-moving animal and feeds mainly on ants, eating between 700 and 5,000 a day. Sometimes, it also feeds on other insects, such as termites and small coccinellid beetles. The silky anteater defecates once a day. Some of those feces contain a large quantity of exoskeleton fragments of insects, indicating the silky anteater does not possess either chitinase or chitobiose, digestive enzymes found in insectivorous bats.

Reproduction Of The Silky Anteater

Females are known to give birth in September or October. The gestation period lasts 120-150 days. It is a solitary animal and gives birth to a single young, up to twice a year.

Young: The young are born already furred, and with a similar colour pattern to the adults. They begin to take solid food when they are about one-third of the adult mass. The young are usually placed inside a nest of dead leaves built in tree holes and left for about eight hours each night.

Did You Know? Some authors suggest the silky anteater usually dwells in silk cotton trees (genus Ceiba). Because of its resemblance to the seed pod fibres of these trees, it can use the trees as camouflage and avoid attacks of predators such as hawks and, especially, harpy eagles.

Ten Facts About The Silky Anteater

1. During the day, they typically sleep curled up in a ball.
2. Although they are rarely seen in the forest, they can be found more easily when they are foraging on lianas at night.
3. When threatened, the silky anteater, like other anteaters, defends itself by standing on its hind legs and holding its forefeet close to its face so it can strike any animal that tries to get close with its sharp claws.
4. Females have smaller home ranges than males.
5. Male home ranges are larger than those of females and will overlap with the home ranges of several females.
6. They are usually silent but are known to make a soft whistling sound.
7. Both the male and the female care for the young.
8. The male will carry the baby anteater on his back.
9. Anteaters don’t have teeth, even adult individuals. They use their long and sticky tongue to catch their prey.
10. There are no major threats to silky anteaters. In some areas, they are captured and kept as pets, although they usually don’t survive long in captivity.

Silky Anteaters In Guyana

In conclusion, the silky anteaters forage for ants, their primary food source, as well as other insects along small branches and hollow stems. They use the powerful claws on their forefeet to tear open the branches and lick up the ants with their long, sticky tongues. They are known to eat up to 5000 ants in a day! The silky anteater is nocturnal and almost never descends to the ground. It is very slow-moving and is not typically an offensive animal. In defence, however, the silky anteater stands on its hind legs and grasps tree limbs with its hind feet and a prehensile tail. It then holds its forefeet close to its face and strikes very quickly with its large claws. Because they are so difficult to find in the wild, little is known about the social systems of the silky anteater.

Article References:

• http://animalia.bio/silky-anteater
• https://animaldiversity.org/accounts/Cyclopes_didactylus/
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silky_anteater
• https://www.canopytower.com/silky-anteater/
• https://nhpbs.org/wild/cyclopedidae.asp
• Image: By Quinten Questel – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=30287945https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/54/Silky_Anteater.jpg