The Tamandua is much smaller than the Great Ant-eater, and is, were it not for its long snout and tail, somewhat like a Sloth. It is nearly as large as one of these animals, and has a long head, small rounded ears, and small mouth. The body, some two feet in length, is rather short, and is covered with short, silky, or woolly shining hair, of almost uniform length. The fore limbs are very stout, especially above the elbow, and the hind ones rest on the rather long sole. The tail is about a foot and a half in length; it is stout at its root, and round and tapering to the blunt end, is minutely scaled, and covered in some places with short hairs. The fore claws are bent on the hand, and the animal walks on their outer and upper surface, using them also to clasp and to hang on in climbing. The tail is more or less prehensile. The colour of the hair and the markings varies much in the species, and in captivity the rusty straw-colour of the body becomes whiter; but there is a line of black on the upper part of the chest reaching over the shoulders and between them and the neck on to the back, and also several black patches over the tail and on the flanks. The Tamandua is an inhabitant of the thick primeval forests of tropical America, and lives in Brazil and Paraguay. It is rarely found on the ground, but resides almost exclusively on trees, where it lives upon termites, honey, and even, according to the report of D’Azara, bees, which in those countries form their hives among the loftiest branches of the forest, and, having no sting, are more readily despoiled of their honey than their congeners of Great Britain. When about to sleep, it hides its muzzle in the fur of its breast, falls on its belly, letting its fore feet hang down on each side, and wrapping the whole tightly round with its tail. The female, as in the case of the Great Ant-eater, has but two pectoral mammæ, and produces but a single cub at a birth, which she carries about with her on her shoulders for the first three or four months. The young are at first exceedingly deformed and ugly, and of an uniform straw-colour. The animal is called Cagouaré by the Guaranis, on account of the noxious and infected vapours of the forests in which alone it is found, the word literally signifying, in the language of those Indians, “the inhabitants of a stinking wood or marsh.” Such at least is D’Azara’s interpretation of the term, though it appears more probable that it may refer to the strong disagreeable odour of the animal itself, which, this very author informs us, is so powerful that it may be perceived at a very great distance, particularly when the animal is irritated. Tamandua is the name by which it is known to the Portuguese of Brazil; the French and the English call it Fourmilier and Little Ant-Bear. THE TWO-TOED ANT-EATER.[72]