Anteater
by Kendal G.
The Anteater is an ant and a termite eater. They also eat mashed fruit and veggies. The Anteaters don’t have teeth so they swallow pebbles and other things along with their bug food by accident. They are closely related to the sloth. The Anteater has a long mouth that has a long tongue sticking out. It has a very furry tail and a long skinny body. The giant anteater has a black stripe along its brown furry body going diagonally. Their body is three to four feet. The anteater lives in Central and South America. They’re found anywhere in Mexico and as far south as Uruguay, and the Northwestern part of Argentina. They mostly like the forests. The anteater's tongue has sticky saliva on it to trap ants and other bugs. The Anteater’s sense of smell is 40 times better then a human.
Over many years the Anteater has evolved to be a vertebrate, which means it has a backbone, and skull, which helps it stand up straight. Also it evolved a jaw to help it chew, which made it a gnathostome, and then it evolved four legs and became a tetrapod. Also it evolved to be an amniote, which means it could lay a water tight egg, to be able to lay eggs on land without its eggs getting dried up. After it evolved a hole in the skull, behind the eye socket, making it a synapsid. Then it became a mammal, which means it has middle ear bones. The last, as we know it evolved placentas, which helps the baby grow inside the mother’s stomach and not in an egg, making it a placental.
My animal is most closely related to the rabbit, bat, lemur, whale, horse, mammoth, the hylochoerus meinertzhageni, and the Irish Elk. To find the anteater’s closest relative, first I would trace down the anteater’s branch back to the most recent node or trait, which is the placenta. Second thing I would do is trace back to the trait up through the other branch that branches off the trait. Once you get up to the rabbit, bat, lemur, whale, horse, mammoth, the hylochoerus meinertzhageni, and the Irish elk you will have reached the closest relative. The only difference between the relatives and the anteater is that most relatives go off to be ungulates, which are hoofed animals. You take the same steps to find the common trait that is the placentas, trace down the branch to the closest node and then you have found the placentas. This is my animal that has taken so many years to evolve to the animal it is today just like many others.
Last updated April 7, 2007.