Anteaters belong to the suborder Vermilingua, which literally means “worm tongue.” This group, including the Giant Anteater, Tamanduas, and Silky Anteater, is defined by its highly specific diet centered on social insects. While the common name suggests a focus on ants, their survival relies on consuming various insects from different sources and environments. The specific composition of their diet shifts depending on the species and the particular habitat it occupies.
The Primary Prey: Ants and Termites
The bulk of an anteater’s diet consists of ants and termites, which provide the necessary protein and fat to sustain their large body size and active metabolism. These insects are the foundational food source for all four species of anteaters. A large anteater can consume between 20,000 and 35,000 insects in a single day to meet its nutritional requirements.
Anteaters strategically select high-calorie prey, focusing on species that lack strong chemical defenses or large, powerful jaws. They concentrate on consuming the insect brood—the eggs and larvae—which are often higher in fat and protein than the adult worker insects. This strategic feeding maximizes caloric intake while minimizing exposure to defensive soldiers.
A typical feeding raid is incredibly brief, often lasting less than a minute on a single nest or mound. This rapid consumption limits the time the anteater is exposed to the insects’ defensive bites or corrosive chemical sprays. By leaving the colony intact, the anteater ensures the insect population can quickly recover, guaranteeing a renewable food source for future visits.
Dietary Differences Among Anteater Species
The question of what else anteaters eat is answered by examining the dietary variations among the different species based on their lifestyle. The fundamental difference in diet is not in consuming completely different food groups, but rather in the varying ratio of ants to termites and the occasional opportunistic consumption of other items.
Giant Anteater
The Giant Anteater is almost entirely terrestrial, foraging primarily on the ground in grasslands and savannas. They consume both ants and termites in large quantities, using powerful claws to tear open the tough structures of terrestrial mounds. The ratio of these two main food sources can shift seasonally; for example, they may rely more heavily on ants during the wet season and switch to termites when the dry season makes mounds more accessible.
Tamanduas
The Tamanduas, including the Northern and Southern species, are semi-arboreal, spending significant time both on the ground and in trees. Their ability to climb allows them to access arboreal nests, often resulting in a diet containing a higher percentage of tree-dwelling termites. Tamanduas are also known to opportunistically consume other invertebrates, such as stingless bees and their larvae, or occasionally soft fruits and grubs, especially when insect prey is scarce.
Silky Anteater
The smallest species, the Silky Anteater, is strictly arboreal and rarely descends to the forest floor. Its diet is predominantly composed of smaller, tree-dwelling ants. Termites and beetles form a very minor part of its intake. Because of their specialized tree-canopy existence, their foraging is limited to the insects found on leaves and within small tree cavities.
The Unique Mechanism of Consumption
The highly restricted diet of the anteater is a direct consequence of its unique anatomy, which is perfectly adapted for myrmecophagy, or insect-eating. Anteaters have no teeth, meaning they cannot chew their food. Instead, they possess an extremely long, cylindrical tongue that can extend up to 24 inches in the Giant Anteater.
The tongue is covered in a thick, sticky saliva produced by enlarged glands, which acts like flypaper to capture thousands of small insects simultaneously. The tongue can be flicked in and out of a nest at an astonishing speed, up to 160 times per minute, rapidly gathering prey. This muscular appendage is anchored deep within the chest cavity, allowing for its remarkable extension and mobility.
The anteater uses its powerful foreclaws, particularly the enlarged third digit, to rip open the hard exterior of ant and termite nests. Once the insects are ingested whole, they are crushed against the hard palate on the roof of the mouth and swallowed. Since they cannot chew, the anteater has a specialized, muscular stomach lining that works like a gizzard, using strong contractions and highly acidic digestive juices to grind the hard, chitinous exoskeletons of the insects.