A giant anteater can eat up to 35,000 ants and termites in a single day. It does this by slashing open a termite mound with its enormous curved claws — which are so big and strong they are also used for self-defence — then pushing its long sticky tongue deep inside. The tongue is covered in thousands of tiny backward-pointing barbs and coated with thick, sticky saliva, so insects stick to it instantly.
Giant anteaters have very poor eyesight, but their sense of smell is about 40 times stronger than a human's. They use it to find termite mounds hidden under soil and leaves. Mother anteaters carry their single baby on their back for up to a year — the baby's fur pattern lines up with the mother's so that from a distance the two look like one animal, which confuses predators.
In Paraguay, giant anteaters live in the Chaco grasslands and the cerrado, a type of wooded savannah. They are not fast runners, but they are surprisingly good swimmers and can cross wide rivers. Conservation teams in Paraguay fit some anteaters with GPS trackers to map where they roam, and local schools near the Chaco learn about anteater protection as part of their science lessons.