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Why Did Anteaters Evolve To Eat Ants?

As their name implies, anteaters have a highly specialized diet. But have you ever wondered why anteaters evolved to eat ants? Perhaps you’d also like to know how many ants they eat every day and whether or not they eat anything else. If so, keep reading. Below, we’ll answer all of these questions and more. 

Why Do Anteaters Eat Ants?

Why Do Anteaters Eat Ants?

Anteaters eat ants as the primary part of their natural diet. These insects provide a significant amount of protein, an essential nutrient for anteaters that helps them survive and gives them energy.

Ants and other insects are plentiful in the forests and grasslands of Central and South America where anteaters live. Since their main food source is abundant, anteaters are able to grow and thrive without facing frequent threats of starvation.

What’s more, by consuming large quantities of ants, anteaters help control the insect populations in their region, keeping the environment in balance. If they did not eat ants, the ant colonies would likely overrun certain areas, which could lead to overgrazing and other environmental issues.

How Do Anteaters Eat Ants?

Anteaters are uniquely designed for their specialized diet. Their keen sense of smell, sharp claws, and sticky tongue are all instrumental in helping them secure sufficient amounts of food each day.

Once anteaters have located an ant colony, they may use their claws to gain better access to the nest. Then they lick up the ants with their long, sticky tongue, grabbing mouthfuls of adult ants, eggs, and larvae in the process.

All anteaters come equipped with elongated snouts to house their long tongues and large salivary glands. Because the tongue is long and narrow, the anteater can use it to penetrate deep into ant nests; the salivary glands secrete a sticky saliva which helps the ants stick to the tongue.

They eat by flicking these long tongues in and out, typically spending only about a minute at any one ant nest and never destroying the entire colony. After eating their fill at one colony, they will move on in search of their next feeding opportunity.

Check out this video to see how anteater search for food and lick it up when they locate it:

How Many Ants Does an Anteater Eat in a Day?

Anteaters are quite large compared to their main food source. As a result, they typically eat a lot of ants throughout the day to support their dietary needs.

Though ants make up the bulk of an anteater’s diet, they often supplement with other insects. Anteaters commonly eat thousands of insects every day, though this can vary depending on their species.

The largest anteaters in the world, giant anteaters, can eat as many as 20,000 insects every single day. Smaller species eat less than that but still consume large quantities of the bugs whenever food is plentiful.

Anteaters can go for months without eating during times of food scarcity. That said, their food supply is rarely scarce.

Because of the great number of ants they eat, anteaters must also drink volumes of water every day–to the tune of 13 gallons. Ants produce a substance called formic acid that can be toxic to anteaters; drinking large amounts of water thins out the toxin and quickly removes it from their system, helping them detoxify and preventing them from experiencing any negative side effects from their diet. 

Do Anteaters Eat Anything Besides Ants?

As noted in the previous section, anteaters will eat other types of insects in addition to ants. In fact, ants only make up about 80 percent of their diet.

Anteaters are classified as insectivores, meaning that insects make up the bulk of their diet. Besides ants, they also eat a lot of termites; they may snack on other insects as well, such as crickets, grasshoppers, and termites.

Sometimes anteaters eat worms, scorpions, and spiders as well, as these are additional sources of protein. Even lizards, turtles, and snakes may make it into their diet if food is scarce; their sharp claws and teeth help them catch and kill these creatures.

Anteaters don’t just eat insects and other living animals; occasionally they also eat plant-based foods. They sometimes enjoy eating fruit or leafy vegetation they find in the wild.

Anteaters living in captivity also enjoy eating human foods like corn, carrots, and rice. These foods may be blended into a paste and fed to the animals to supplement their insect-intensive diets.

Finally, during times when food is especially scarce, anteaters may resort to eating carrion. Though they prefer a specialized diet of insects in general and ants in particular, they can eat a wide variety of foods to protect themselves from starvation.

How Does an Anteater’s Diet Affect Other Species?

Everything animals do in the wild affects other animals in their environment. Anteaters are no exception to this rule.

Most notably, anteaters’ diets affect insect populations in their region, especially ant and termite populations. 

Because they eat so many of these insects, they prevent their colonies from growing so large that they overrun the area. At the same time, anteaters never destroy an entire insect colony; this ensures that ants and termites remain plentiful so that their food source never disappears entirely.

Other species living in an area are also affected by anteaters’ consumption of ants and termites. Since insect populations are kept in check, this preserves the vegetation that serves as the main food supply for many animals that call the South American forests and grasslands home.

Conclusion

Anteaters eat ants and other insects because they serve as an important source of protein in their diet; eating ants also helps preserve balance in their environment. In addition to ants and termites, anteaters often eat other insects and small animals; occasionally, they also add fruit and various forms of vegetation into their diet.

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