Myrmecophagy

Notable myrmecophages include the giant anteaters and tamanduas, some armadillos, and pangolins, as well as some members of the order Carnivora such as the sloth bear of the Indian subcontinent and the aardwolf of Southern Africa.

Myrmecophagy means "ant-eating" (Ancient Greek: murmēx, "ants", and phagein, "to eat"); the related habit of termite-eating is termitophagy.

The two dietary habits often overlap, as these eusocial insects live in large, densely-populated, terrestrial ant colonies or termite mounds, requiring specialised adaptations from any species that wishes to access them.

Physical traits of myrmecophagous animals include long, sharp, often curved frontal claws for digging into nests or mounds.

Myrmecophagy is found in several land-dwelling vertebrate taxa, including reptiles and amphibians (horned lizards and blind snakes, narrow-mouthed toads of the family Microhylidae and poison frogs of the Dendrobatidae), some New World bird species (Antbirds, Antthrushes, Antpittas, flicker of genus Colaptes), and mammalian groups including anteaters, aardvarks, aardwolves, armadillos, echidnas, numbats, pangolins, and sloth bears.

In the nineteenth and early twentieth century many zoologists saw these shared features as evidence of relatedness, and accordingly they classified the various species as a single order of Mammalia, the Edentata.

Both of them are regarded with interest for their habit of constructing conical pit traps in fine sand or dust, at the bottom of which they await prey that has fallen in.