Tamanduaí

Who is this strange animal? He’s a little bit bigger than a squirrel, but looks like a sloth. This is the Tamanduaí (Cyclopes didactylus) or Dwarf Anteater, the smallest anteater of the world. Very rare to watch, he sleeps during the day, twisted in the top of the trees. Using his prehensile tail, he moves at night, in order to dig ants and termites nests, his only food. Even so, he never go down from the trees.

Becase of this recluse habits, this animal is very few known. This is the reason because there are few pictures of him in nature. Besides, what makes difficult the study of this animal is the fact that there is no one specimen in captivity.

The little things that we know about this animal were discovered by some observations in his habitat, the Tropical Rain Forest. They live usually alone, but can be seen in pairs during the mating season and when the single young needs special care. In the beginning, he is fed with milk and then with a pap of insects vomited by the parents.

In spite of this apparent fragility, he knows how to defend himself from the predators very well, using his strong and recurved claws . However, the Tamanduaí has a powerfull enemy: the man, who is killing the forest. The Tamanduaí is losing his habitat and can’t go away to other region more inhospitable because he moves very slowly, like many other animals in the Amazon Rain Forest.

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