True anteaters share an order with sloths alone
Only four living mammals belong to Vermilingua, the worm-tongue anteaters: giant, silky, and two tamanduas. Together with sloths they make Pilosa inside Xenarthra. Aardvarks, pangolins, and echidnas get called anteaters too, but that likeness is convergent evolution, not kinship.
Giant anteaters stretch about one point eight metres including the tail and average near thirty-three kilograms, marked by a triangular white-edged shoulder band. Silky anteaters shrink to roughly thirty-five to forty-three centimetres and about two hundred thirty-five grams of dense golden fur. Tamanduas fall between, about zero point eight to one point three metres and three to seven kilograms, with shorter snouts and partly naked prehensile tails. All raid ant and termite nests with digging forelimbs, sticky long tongues, and toothless tubes for snouts.
Xenarthra diversified while South America was an island continent. Shared low body temperatures of thirty-three to thirty-six degrees Celsius and modest metabolic rates suit a diet that barely covers daily energy budgets. Territories of about one to one and a half square miles are defended mostly against same-sex rivals; males may enter female ranges. Disputes bring vocalising, swatting, and occasional riding of an opponent's back.
English muddles identities: antbear often means aardvark, and tamandua enters from Tupi. Once taxonomists bundled anteaters with pangolins and aardvarks on snout shape alone; molecules and fossils broke that club. The four Vermilingua species remain the genuine worm-tongued specialists of the American tropics—living proof that similar tools can evolve on separate branches. Watching a giant anteater rake a termite mound with curved claws makes the convergent toolbox obvious—and the phylogenetic distance from aardvarks equally clear. Four living vermilinguans are all that remain of that South American experiment in toothless insectivory.
Source: Anteater
