Anteaters
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40 free Anteaters trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Anteaters are some of the strangest mammals in the Americas. They live on insects so small that eating enough of them takes a body rebuilt for the job, from the long tubular face to the oversized front claws, and almost every part of that body comes with a surprise. This quiz turns the best anteater fun facts into questions: how these creatures find, catch and digest their food, how they defend themselves and raise their young, where the different species live, and which unrelated ant-eaters around the world get mistaken for them. A few questions follow the anteater into art, folklore, space and college sport. It suits curious nature lovers, students and teachers, and anyone who has watched one shuffle past at a zoo. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you will finish knowing far more about anteaters than when you started.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which Surrealist painter walked a giant anteater on a leash out of a Paris Metro station in 1969?
Salvador Dalí
Salvador Dalí held the leash in what was a staged photo stunt, and the animal was most likely borrowed from a zoo, not kept as a pet.
Q 02Which feature of nearly every other mammal's mouth is completely missing in all anteaters, large and small?
Teeth
Teeth are absent in every anteater, so insects are crushed against the roof of the mouth and then pulverised by a very muscular stomach.
Q 03Which part of its front feet does a giant anteater walk on, keeping its long claws tucked away?
Knuckles
Knuckles take the weight, as they do for gorillas and chimpanzees, so the claws stay curled up and sharp for ripping into nests.
Q 04Feeding for only about a minute at each nest, a giant anteater can still eat roughly how many insects a day?
30,000
30,000 or so ants and termites vanish in a day, yet each nest loses only a small share before the raider moves on to the next one.
Q 05Where does a baby giant anteater spend much of its first year, its stripe lined up with its mother's?
Riding on her back
Riding on her back, the youngster blends its black-and-white stripe into hers, so the pair look like one larger animal to a predator.
Q 06Which sense, said to be 40 times keener than a human's, guides a giant anteater to hidden insect nests?
Smell
Smell does nearly all the work, because the eyesight is poor; a giant anteater can even tell which species of ant is inside before it starts digging.
Q 07Which mammals share the order Pilosa with anteaters and are their closest living relatives?
Sloths
Sloths and anteaters parted ways around 58 million years ago, and armadillos are the next nearest cousins of both.
Q 08Which African burrowing mammal is often called an antbear, though it is no relation of the true anteaters?
Aardvark
Aardvark is Afrikaans for earth pig, and the animal's long snout and taste for termites arose quite separately from any anteater's.
Q 09Giant anteaters are built for ripping open insect nests, yet zoos call them surprisingly good at what?
Swimming
Swimming comes easily to a giant anteater, which paddles with a freestyle stroke and holds its long snout above the water like a snorkel.
Q 10Which University of California campus has called its sports teams the Anteaters since a 1965 student vote?
UC Irvine
UC Irvine students picked the anteater in a campus election, passing over a roadrunner, a unicorn, a seahawk and a golden bison.
Q 11About how long is the sticky, worm-like tongue that a giant anteater flicks into ant and termite nests?
60 cm (2 ft)
60 cm (2 ft) of tongue helps explain the scientific name for the anteaters, Vermilingua, which literally means worm tongue.
Q 12Which powerful predator is one of only two animals known to hunt fully grown giant anteaters?
Jaguar
Jaguar and puma are the only hunters of adults, and it is risky work, because a cornered giant anteater's front claws can potentially kill the cat.
Q 13What does a cornered giant anteater do when a predator closes in?
Stands on its hind legs
Q 21The giant anteater's stomach crushes insects with hardened folds and sand, much like which bird organ?
Gizzard
Gizzard-style crushing makes up for a mouth that cannot chew, with the sand and soil swallowed at each meal doing the work of millstones.
Q 22A giant anteater's tongue is so long that its muscles are anchored far behind the mouth, on which bone?
Breastbone
Breastbone, or sternum, is the anchor point, and the tongue retreats into the throat between licks without blocking the animal's breathing.
Q 23What do biologists call the process that gave anteaters and unrelated ant-eating mammals such similar snouts?
Convergent evolution
It stands on its hind legs, steadied by its big tail like a tripod, which leaves both clawed arms free to slash.
Q 14What is a baby giant anteater called, born singly after a pregnancy of about six months?
Pup
Pup is the word, and a newborn arrives with a full coat of hair, looking almost identical to a tiny adult.
Q 15Where does the giant anteater, by far the largest member of its family, spend nearly all of its time?
On the ground
On the ground is where it forages and sleeps, while its smaller relatives spend much of their lives up in the trees.
Q 16A giant anteater's tongue can dart in and out of a nest up to about how many times a minute?
150
150 flicks a minute, more than two every second, lets the animal grab a meal before the nest's soldiers can drive it off.
Q 17Which scale-covered mammal of Africa and Asia is widely known as the scaly anteater?
Pangolin
Pangolin scales are made of keratin, the same material as human fingernails, and the animal curls into an armoured ball when threatened.
Q 18Which egg-laying mammal of Australia and New Guinea is sometimes called the spiny anteater?
Echidna
Echidna and platypus are the only living mammals that lay eggs, and the echidna's quills and ant-catching tongue explain the nickname.
Q 19The underside of a tamandua's tail is bare of fur, which helps this tree-climbing anteater do what?
Grip branches
Grip branches is the answer: bare skin gives a firmer hold, so the tail works like a fifth limb while the animal feeds high up.
Q 20Giant anteaters make no stomach acid of their own, so which acid from their prey helps digest each meal?
Formic
Formic acid, the stinging chemical that many ants carry, does the job once thousands of the insects reach the stomach.
Convergent evolution produced digging forearms, long tongues and tube-like snouts separately in several mammal groups that raid termite mounds.
Q 24Which land bridge, formed about three million years ago, let anteaters spread north?
Isthmus of Panama
Isthmus of Panama joined two long-separated continents, and anteaters walked north in the wildlife swap known as the Great American Interchange.
Q 25Which IUCN Red List category covers the giant anteater, already wiped out in Uruguay and parts of Paraguay?
Vulnerable
Vulnerable is the listing, earned by a population that fell by more than 30 percent in three generations as its habitat was lost.
Q 26Which hazard struck Brazil's Emas National Park in 1994, killing many of its giant anteaters?
Wildfires
Wildfires are a special danger because a giant anteater's long coat catches light easily and the animal is too slow to outrun the flames.
Q 27A southern tamandua's long tongue slides out of a mouth opening about as wide as which everyday object?
A pencil eraser
A pencil eraser, about 6 millimetres across, is all the gap this anteater needs, since only its slender tongue and the insects stuck to it pass through.
Q 28Which naturalist gave the giant anteater its scientific name, Myrmecophaga tridactyla, in the year 1758?
Carl Linnaeus
Carl Linnaeus built the name from Greek words meaning anteater and three fingers, even though each foot actually carries five toes.
Q 29Europeans once believed that all giant anteaters were female and mated using which part of the body?
Nose
Nose-to-nose mating was the popular belief after the animals were first shipped across the Atlantic for display, until naturalist Félix de Azara corrected it.
Q 30Why was a 2017 Wildlife Photographer of the Year winner, showing an anteater at a termite mound, disqualified?
The animal was stuffed
The animal was stuffed, judges at London's Natural History Museum concluded, matching it to a taxidermy mount displayed at the park's entrance; the photographer denied it.