Curious creatures to whom the ant is la haute cuisine.
One day recently I picked up a few termites and ate them,
wondering at their widespread appeal. These particular ones
proved to be dry and hard and with a faintly resinous
aftertaste; in fact, I have yet to eat ants or termites
that tasted good raw. My opinion notwithstanding, these
insects are the preferred food of some of the most unusual
animals alive today: the myrmecophagous (ant- and termite-eating)
mammals. This group includes anteaters, armadillos, pangolins,
the aardwolf, echidnas, the numbat and, beloved of crossword-puzzle
addicts and amateur poets, the aardvark. With the exception of
armadillos and anteaters, these mammals are not closely related,
sharing only a common passion for ants and termites. For a long
time termites were called "white ants," and so the descriptive
name "anteater" was used to refer to both ant- and termite-eating
mammals. Most myrmecophagous mammals eat both, although some
species appear to restrict themselves to one or the other.
Only 22 mammals can be considered true ant and termite eaters:
not many out of the 4,170 known species. This is particularly
striking when one considers that in some areas ants and termites
comprise up to 75 percent of the total animal biomass. In fact,
the number of individual ants and termites alive at this moment
is greater than the number of all humans who have ever lived.
That is a lot of potential food. Where you find a lot of ants
or termites you usually find one of these curious predators.
Each of the world's tropical areas has its own anteaters. In
South and Central America, where I spent two and a half years,
anteaters share the myrmecophagous niche with a variety of
armadillos. The anteaters range from the giant at 100 pounds or
so down to the pygmy at about a pound. Armadillos, which range
from Kansas and Missouri to Argentina, are unique in the mammal
world in possessing a hardened shell made of bony plates and teeth with no enamel.