These animals are mainly anteaters. The Japanese have a curious legend as to the method adopted for the capture of ants, which is related by Dr. Jentink in his monograph of the genus. The Manis "erects his scales and feigns to be dead; the ants creep between the erected scales, after which the anteater again closes its scales and enters the water; he now again erects the scales, the ants are set floating, and are then swallowed by the anteaters"! The same story is related by Mr. Stanley Flower on the authority of the Malays. Though it seems clear that the likenesses which _Manis_ shows {190} to the Anteaters of the New World are chiefly adaptive and have nothing to do with real affinity, being merely an expression of a similar mode of life, it is curious to note that here and there we do find certain resemblances which do not seem to be susceptible of the latter explanation. The jugal bone, absent in _Manis_, is small in _Myrmecophaga_; the clavicle is absent and again small or rudimentary in the Anteaters; it is large in other Edentates. The third trochanter is absent, as in _Myrmecophaga_ (and the Sloths). There are many scales on the body; in _Myrmecophaga_ there are traces of these structures on the tail, as also in _Tamandua_. In the features mentioned, the Myrmecophagidae differ from either or from both of the two other American families (_i.e._ Dasypodidae, Bradypodidae) and agree with _Manis_. The facts are not a little remarkable. [Illustration] FIG. 109.--Manis. _Manis gigantea._ x 1/12. ORDER III. GANODONTA.[119] Allied to the Edentata, and apparently representing the ancestral forms from which they, at any rate the Xenarthra were derived, is the order of the Ganodonta. Of this order a number of genera are now known, which can be ranged in a series which more and more approaches the Edentata as we pass from the older to the newer forms. This interesting and transitional series will be made manifest by a description of the characters of the various genera taken in their proper {191} chronological order. The following genera are included by Wortman in his family STYLINODONTIDAE.