The habits of this animal, which has been named Great Ant-Bear by the English and Spaniards, have been described as follows:--“The habits of the Great Ant-Bear are slothful and solitary; the greater part of his life is consumed in sleeping, notwithstanding which he is never fat, and rarely even in good condition. When about to sleep he lies on one side, conceals his long snout in the fur of the breast, locks the hind and fore claws into one another, so as to cover the head and belly, and turns his long, bushy tail over the whole body in such a manner as to protect it from the too powerful rays of the sun. The female bears but a single young one at a birth, which attaches itself to her back, and is carried about with her wherever she goes, rarely quitting her, even for a year after it has acquired sufficient strength to walk and provide for itself. This unprolific constitution, and the tardy growth of the young, account for the comparative rarity of these animals, which are said to be seldom seen, even in their native regions. The female has only two mammæ, situated on the breast, like those of Monkeys, Apes, and Bats. In his natural state the Ant-Bear lives exclusively upon Ants, to procure which he opens their hills with his powerful crooked claws, and at the moment that the insects, according to their nature, flock from all quarters to defend their dwellings, draws over them his long, flexible tongue covered with glutinous saliva, to which they consequently adhere; and so quickly does he repeat this operation, that we are assured he will thus exsert his tongue and draw it in again covered with insects twice in a second. He never actually introduces it into the holes or breaches which he makes in the hills themselves, but only draws it lightly over the swarms of insects which will issue forth, alarmed by his attack. ‘It seems almost incredible,’ says D’Azara, ‘that so robust and powerful an animal can procure sufficient sustenance from Ants alone; but this circumstance has nothing strange in it to those who are acquainted with the tropical parts of America, and who have seen the enormous multitudes of these insects, which swarm in all parts of the country to that degree that their hills often almost touch one another for miles together.’ The same author informs us that domestic Ant-Bears were occasionally kept by different persons in Paraguay, and that they had even been sent alive to Spain, being fed upon bread-and-milk mixed with morsels of flesh minced very small. Like all animals which live upon insects, they are capable of sustaining a total deprivation of nourishment for an almost incredible time.” [Illustration: GREAT ANT-BEAR.]