Authors: Gerald Durrell
By the time he had captured his mount and returned to the ant-eater, the beast had broken out of his sack for the second time. It was just at this point that we had arrived back on the
scene.
Presently, Francis’s wife galloped up on the bull’s back and she helped us to load the ant-eater on to it. The bull was very quiet about the whole business and did not seem to mind
whether the sack on his back was full of potatoes or rattlesnakes, and although the ant-eater hissed and struggled as much as he could, the bull plodded steadily onwards, taking not the slightest
notice.
We reached the ranch just after dark and there got our capture out of the sack and untied him. I made a rough harness out of the rope and tethered him to a big tree; also, a large bowl of water
was placed there for him and he was left to have a good night’s sleep.
Very early the next morning I crept out to have a look at him, and at first glance I thought he had managed to escape in the night, for I could not see him. I realized after a while that he was
lying between the roots of the tree, curled up in a tight ball, and had spread his tail over himself, like a great grey shawl, so that from a distance he looked less like an ant-eater and more like
a pile of old cinders. It was then that I realized how very useful his big tail must be to him. In the grasslands he scrapes himself a shallow bed in among the big tussocks of grass, curls himself
up in this and spreads his tail over himself like a roof, and only the very worst weather could succeed in penetrating this hairy cover.
My problem now was to teach Amos, as we called him, to eat a substitute food, for he could not be fed on a diet of white ants at the zoo in England. The mixture was composed of milk, raw egg,
and finely minced beef, to which was added three drops of cod-liver oil. I filled a large bowl with this mixture and took it along to a big white ants’ nest, which was not far from the
ranch-house, and, making a hole in the nest, collected a handful of the creatures and scattered them over the surface of the milky substance in the bowl. I carried the whole lot back and placed it
where Amos could reach it.
I thought it would be some time before he would take to this new food, but, to my surprise, on seeing the bowl, he rose to his feet and ambled forwards. He sniffed carefully and flipped out his
long snake-like tongue and dipped it into the mixture. Then he paused for a moment, musing over the taste, and having decided that it was to his liking he stood over the bowl, his long tongue
flipping out and in with amazing rapidity until it had been licked quite clean. The ant-eaters, of course, have no teeth and rely on their tongues and the sticky saliva to pick up their food.
Occasionally, as a special treat, I would give Amos a bowlful of termites which were, naturally, all mixed up with lumps of their clay nest. It was amazing to watch his long tongue come out and
dip into the pot so that the white ants and the bits of clay stuck to it like flies to a flypaper. But then as he drew his tongue back into his mouth again, the bits of clay would be knocked off by
his lips, so that only the white ants were sucked inside. He was really extremely clever at doing this.
Not long after I arrived back at our base camp in Georgetown, and Amos had settled down in his new pen, I succeeded in getting a wife for him. She arrived one day tied up in a snorting bundle
and crammed into the boot of a taxi-cab. The person who had captured her had not been very careful about the job and she had several nasty cuts on her body and was extremely exhausted through lack
of food and water. When I took the ropes off her, she just lay on her side on the ground, hissing in a very feeble manner, and I did not think that she was going to live. I give her a bowl of water
to drink, and no sooner had she sucked it up than she revived most miraculously and got to her feet and started attacking everyone in sight.
Amos had got used to being the only ant-eater in the place and did not receive his mate very kindly. When I opened the door of his pen and tried to push the female inside with him, he gave her a
loving greeting by bashing her on the nose with his claws and hissing furiously. Eventually I decided that they had better share adjoining cages until they had got used to one another. Amos’s
pen was very large, so I just simply divided it down the middle with stakes. Now, whereas Amos had been no trouble at all about his food, his new wife was extremely difficult. She refused
point-blank even to sample the mixture that I gave her in a bowl, and for twenty-four hours she was on this hunger strike.
The day after her arrival, however, I had an idea. When I was feeding Amos, I pushed his bowl close to the wooden bars that separated him from the female. Amos’s table manners were not of
the very best, and anyone standing within thirty feet of him, when he was having his food, was made well aware of the fact, even if they could not see him, by the sucking snorting, and snuffling
sounds that he produced. The female ant-eater, attracted by the noises of Amos enjoying his breakfast, went over to the bars to see what it was he was eating. She stuck her slender nose between the
stakes and sniffed at his bowl of food, and then very slowly and cautiously she dipped her long tongue into the mixture. Within a couple of minutes she was gobbling it down with the same speed and
enthusiasm that Amos displayed. And for the next fortnight, she ate all her food like this, with her neck stuck through the bars and her long tongue sharing the bowl with Amos.
At last, by constantly feeding out of the same pot, they became quite used to each other and it was not long before we removed the bars in between and allowed them to share the pen. They became
very affectionate and would always sleep close together, their tails carefully spread over themselves. For the voyage home, however, I could not get a cage big enough to hold the two of them, so
they had to travel in separate boxes. When we were on board ship, however, I pushed the two cages close together, so they could stick their long noses out and sniff at each other.
When they eventually arrived back in England and went off to the zoo, they used to amuse crowds of visitors by giving boxing matches. They would stand up on their hind legs, their great noses
swinging from side to side like pendulums, clouting and slashing at each other with their long, murderous-looking claws, their tails swishing and sweeping on the ground.
These boxing matches looked fast and furious, but never once did they hurt each other.
The second biggest ant-eater found in Guiana is the forest-loving tamandua. This looks not unlike the giant; it has the same long curved snout and small beady eyes and the powerful front feet
with great hooked claws. It is clad in short, light-brown fur and its tail is long and curved. Whereas the giant ant-eater uses its tail as a form of covering, the tamandua cannot do this with his,
but he uses it as the tree porcupine or the monkeys in Guiana use theirs, to assist him in climbing up trees. The tamanduas were the most stupid creatures we ever caught in Guiana.
In the wild state they clamber up the tall forest trees and work their way out along the great branches until they find a large earth nest of the tree ants. Using their great hooked claws, they
break open the ant fortress and proceed to lick up the ants with their long sticky tongue. Every now and then they will break off a little more of the ants’ nest and go on with their licking.
In captivity they find it difficult to rid themselves of this habit and, when you present them with a pot of minced meat, raw egg, and milk, they dip their long claws into it, lick up a bit and
then scrape at it again with their claws. It would usually end with them overturning the pot on the floor of their cage. They were under the impression that the pot was a sort of ants’ nest
that had to be broken in order to get at the contents, and it was only by fixing their food dish to the wire that I could prevent them from splashing their food all over themselves and the
cage.
The first of the pygmy ant-eaters that I obtained was in an Amerindian village in the creek islands. I had been travelling all day by canoe, visiting various settlements and buying whatever
animals they had for sale. In this particular village I found quite a good haul of pets and spent an entertaining hour or so bargaining with the villagers. As they could not speak English and I
could not speak their language it all had to be done in sign language.
Presently, through the thick of people surrounding me, a small boy of about seven or eight years of age pushed his way, carrying in one hand a long stick, on the end of which was something that
at first glance I thought was a giant chrysalis of one of the big forest butterflies. However, on looking more closely I discovered that it was a pygmy ant-eater, clinging to the branch with its
eyes tightly closed. I bought it off the boy and found that there were a lot of interesting points about the little animal which I had not seen mentioned in any book on natural history.
The little creatures measure about six inches long and are completely clad in thick soft golden-brown fur, that makes them look more like tiny toy teddy bears. Their long, prehensile tail is
also thickly covered. The soles of their hind feet, which are bright pink in colour, are slightly cupped, so that when the creatures scramble about the branches their feet fit round the twigs and
give the ant-eater an excellent grip. When a pygmy ant-eater is holding on with his hind feet and his tail, it is almost impossible to pull it off the branch without seriously hurting it. Like its
relatives, its forefeet are short and very powerful and are armed with three curved claws, a big one in the centre and two small ones on each side. The palm of its paw is like a small pink cushion
and, when it grips with its front feet, the long claws snap down on to the palm with tremendous strength, rather like a blade of a pocket-knife fitting into the slot.
These little animals have a very curious habit which has earned them the name among the natives of Guiana of ‘Tank ’e God’. When asleep, the creature sits clasping the branch
with its hind feet and tail wound round tightly, sitting upright like a guardsman, with its two front paws raised heavenwards. If it is disturbed in any way, it will fall forwards on its enemy and
the two large claws on its front paws will slash and rip its assailant. The ant-eater will also adopt this odd position when it is frightened, and will squat there for sometimes as long as half an
hour, its paws raised high above its head, its eyes closed, waiting for an opportunity to attack.
The little ant-eater was extremely slow and sleepy in his movements and seemed so resigned to his capture that I did not even have to put him in a box, but just leant the twig he was sitting on
in the bows of the canoe, and he stood there very stiffly and upright, like a figurehead on an old ship, and remained without moving until we reached our camp. I was not at all sure what sort of
food the little fellow would eat, but I knew from books that this tiny animal lives on the nectar of various forest flowers. So the first evening, I mixed up a solution of honey and water, and hung
a little pot of it in the ant-eater’s cage.
About eight o’clock that evening, he started to show signs of life. He got down from his stiff, upright attitude and started to crawl in among the branches in his cage in a slow and
cautious manner: he was like an old man on a slippery road. Then he discovered the pot of honey. He was hanging on the bars just below it and he sniffed it very carefully with his short pink nose
and then decided that it probably contained something worth eating. Before I could stop him, he had hooked a claw over the edge of the little dish and tipped it up, and the next moment he was
covered in a shower of honey and water. He was extremely indignant about this, and even more irritated when I had to take him out of the cage and mop him up with a piece of cotton-wool; for the
rest of the evening he sat on a branch, cleaning off the sticky remains from his fur.
He enjoyed honey and water very much, but I had to give it to him in a pot with a very small mouth, otherwise he would dip his whole head into it and then climb down on to the floor and wander
about, so that by the time morning came, he looked like a moving ball of sticky sawdust.
Honey and water, however, did not give the little animal sufficient nourishment, and so I tried him on some ants’ eggs. To my surprise, he firmly refused to eat these; then I tried him
with the ants themselves, and he appeared to be even less interested in them than he was in their eggs. Eventually, more by mistake than anything else, I discovered that he liked grasshoppers and
moths, and he would pursue these round his cage with great vigour every evening.
The ant-eaters of Guiana are certainly not the easiest of animals to keep in captivity, but they are very fascinating beasts and it is well worth taking some trouble over them.
The creeks ran all round the village of Santa Maria, and so to all intents and purposes we were living on an island. The creeks, I found, were full of vast numbers of baby
caymans, and I was very anxious to catch a good supply of these. I soon found out that it was not quite as simple as had been the capturing of crocodiles in the Cameroons. For there you wade along
the shallow streams and catch them on the sandbanks. The creeks round Santa Maria were far too deep to do this, quite apart from the fact that they were inhabited by other things besides caymans,
such as electric eels and a vicious and bloodthirsty fish called the piranha, both of which would make unpleasant bathing companions. So, in order to capture the baby caymans, I had to adapt my
method for hunting crocodile to the country I was in.
We had a big canoe and went off down the creeks late one night, taking with us a big torch and a long stick with a cord tied to the end, which terminated in a slip-knot. I sat right up in the
bows of the canoe, holding the torch and this stick, while the paddler in the stern propelled us slowly and gently across the dark waters. I soon found that the baby caymans preferred to lie in the
places where the weeds were thick on the surface, with just their noses and their bulbous eyes sticking out. As we moved gently along I shone the torch to and fro, over these patches of weed, until
eventually I saw the fiery glow of a baby cayman’s eyes some thirty yards away. Using my free hand to signal, I guided the paddler in the stern until we came to the edge of this weed patch
and then signalled him to slow down and eventually stop.