Cyclopedidae Myrmecophagidae Anteaters are the four extant mammal species in the suborder Vermilingua[1] (meaning "worm tongue"), commonly known for eating ants and termites.

The name "anteater" is also commonly applied to the aardvark, numbat, echidnas, and pangolins, although they are not closely related to them.

Anteater has also been used as a common name for a number of animals that are not in Vermilingua, including the echidnas, numbat, pangolins, and aardvark.

All have evolved powerful digging forearms, long tongues, and toothless, tube-like snouts to subsist by raiding termite mounds.

[12][13][15] Giant anteaters have the largest degree of rostral elongation relative to their size of any other ant-eating mammal.

[16] The tamanduas are medium-sized species smaller than the giant anteater, with a total body length of around 0.77–1.33 m (2.5–4.4 ft) and a mass of 3.2–7.0 kg (7.1–15.4 lb).

[12][17] Some South American populations have a chocolate brown stripe down the middle of the back, most prominent in the Amazon basin.

[16] Anteaters are endemic to the New World, where they are found on the mainland from southern Mexico to northern Argentina,[12] as well as some of the Caribbean islands.

[22] Currently, the giant anteater is known from Central America south east of the Andes to northern Argentina, Bolivia, and Paraguay.

The silky anteater is specialized to an arboreal environment, but the more opportunistic tamanduas find their food both on the ground and in trees, typically in dry forests near streams and lakes.

[25] The silky anteater (Cyclopes didactylus) is a native of the hottest parts of South and Central America and exclusively arboreal in its habits.

[24] Anteaters have poor sight but an excellent sense of smell, and most species depend on the latter for foraging, feeding, and defence.

Visual sex determination can, however, be difficult, since the penis and testes are located internally between the rectum and urinary bladder in males and females have a single pair of mammae near the armpits.

[24] The anteater's tongue is covered with thousands of tiny hooks called filiform papillae which are used to hold the insects together with large amounts of saliva.

The anteater's stomach, similar to a bird's gizzard, has hardened folds and uses strong contractions to grind the insects, a digestive process assisted by small amounts of ingested sand and dirt.

[34] Parasitic worms collected from anteaters include those in the class Cestoda and nematodes in the families Spiruridae, Physalopteridae, Trichostrongylidae, and Ascarididae.

[33][45] Anteaters have also been infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19,[44] Leishmania, the protozoan that causes leishmaniasis,[46] and canine distemper-causing Morbillivirus, contracting the last disease from a maned wolf in captivity.

[50][51][52] The giant anteater is classified as being vulnerable due to high levels of habitat loss and degradation, an ongoing population decline of greater than 30% in the last 21 years, and a number of threats such as hunting and wildfires.