Animal Facts
Scientific Name
Myrmecophaga tridactyla
Range
Central and South America, from Honduras to northern Argentina
Location in the Zoo
South America’s Pantanal
Cool Animal Fact
Giant anteaters are the largest of the four anteater species. They can eat up to 35,000 ants and termites in a day and have no teeth.
How We Help Save Them
- The Zoo provides salaries, training, and expertise for biologists and veterinarians working with wild giant anteaters in Brazil.
- The Zoo provides equipment like camera traps and tracking devices to study and understand giant anteater movement patterns to better protect them in the wild.
More About our Saving Wildlife Efforts
The Houston Zoo partners with the Brazilian Giant Anteater and Highways Project to study how anteaters interact with roads and to come up with safer road-crossing solutions to protect them and many other species by reducing the potential for collisions with vehicles. Last year, we provided support for 92,364 km of highways to be monitored in Brazil to identify ways to protect giant anteaters from getting hit by cars.
