Many suggestions have been offered as to the manner in which these great claws were employed. The teeth demonstrate that these animals could not have had predaceous habits, but must have been inoffensive plant-feeders. As no such herbivorous creatures are living now, it is impossible to reach a definitive solution of the problem, which is further complicated by the fact that in two other orders of hoofed mammals, Artiodactyla and †Toxodontia, a more or less similar transformation of hoofs into claws took place, and among the edentates the large, herbivorous †ground-sloths (†Gravigrada) had enormous claws. It is inadmissible to suppose that these great †chalicotheres could have been burrowers, or tree-climbers, or that they pursued and slaughtered prey of any kind, for, aside from the character of the teeth, such heavy and slow-moving beasts would have been utterly inefficient at work of that sort. No doubt, the claws were used, to some extent, as weapons of defence, as the existing South American Ant-Bear (_Myrmecophaga jubata_) uses his formidable claws; probably also some, if not all, of these clawed ungulates would employ the fore feet in digging for roots and tubers, as is done by the bears generally. Many years ago, the late Sir Richard Owen suggested with reference to the †ground-sloths that the principal use of the fore feet, other than that of locomotion, was to draw down within reach of the long tongue and prehensile upper lip the branches upon which they browsed. This explanation may perhaps be applicable to all of these aberrant and exceptional groups of hoofed animals. [Illustration: FIG. 185.—Left manus of lower Miocene †chalicothere (_†Moropus_). (After Peterson.)]