some resemblance to a heraldic banner. It has an excessively long
slender muzzle, and a wormlike extensile tongue. Its jaws are
destitute of teeth. The claws are much elongated, and its gait is
very awkward. It lives on the ground, and feeds on termites, or
white ants -- the long claws being employed to pull in pieces the
solid hillocks made by the insects, and the long flexible tongue
to lick them up from the crevices. All the other species of this
singular genus are arboreal. I met with four species altogether.
One was the Myrmecophaga tetradactyla; the two others, more
curious and less known, were very small kinds, called Tamandua-i.
Both are similar in size--ten inches in length, exclusive of the
tail--and in the number of the claws, having two of unequal
length to the anterior feet, and four to the hind feet. One
species is clothed with greyish-yellow silky hair-- this is of
rare occurrence. The other has a fur of a dingy brown colour,
without silky lustre. One was brought to me alive at Caripi,
having been caught by an Indian, clinging motionless inside a
hollow tree. I kept it in the house about twenty-four hours. It
had a moderately long snout, curved downwards, and extremely
small eyes. It remained nearly all the time without motion except
when irritated, in which case it reared itself on its hind legs
from the back of a chair to which it clung, and clawed out with
its forepaws like a cat. Its manner of clinging with its claws,
and the sluggishness of its motions, gave it a great resemblance
to a sloth. It uttered no sound, and remained all night on the
spot where I had placed it in the morning. The next day, I put it
on a tree in the open air, and at night it escaped. These small
Tamanduas are nocturnal in their habits, and feed on those
species of termites which construct earthy nests that look like
ugly excrescences on the trunks and branches of trees. The