The Colossal Anteater - Speculative Evolution

The first entry to a bestiary of fictional animals made by yours truly.

A drawing made by myself depicting the colossal anteater. I know it isn’t the best, but it is a visual aid. I also apologize for any incorrect spellings in the drawing’s descriptions, if there are any. For a writer, I am an oddly atrocious speller.

The Colossal Anteater

K.L. Orion

Somewhere in Central America a few million years in the future, an enormous hand equipped with sharp claws digs into a giant termite mound. Within the last age, giant termite mounds similar to the ones in Africa have popped up in the southern plains of North America, stretching down into Central America and into South America. These huge mound builders might’ve been descended from the termites of Africa, coming over to the Americas initially as an invasive species. However, now they have adapted to American life, and so have the animals around them. This nearly fifteen foot tall insect mound is getting invaded by one of the strangest predators in Earth’s history. The concrete-like walls of the bugs’ fortress is no match for the claws of the colossal anteater, a descendant of today’s giant anteaters. 

Welcome readers to my new Substack idea. This is the start to a series of sorts that differs greatly from all of my other works so far. While I plan continuing the opinion and philosophy pieces I’ve been doing, I was thinking of adding this to boost the content. As you likely know by now, I am a huge animal nerd, especially when it comes to paleontology and evolution. Because of my obsession, I have gotten into a genre of fiction called speculative evolution. It is exactly what it sounds like. It is where someone speculates paths of evolution, and it can get really complex and fun. This project and others like it are ideas for speculative creatures I have come up with myself. They aren’t the most realistic, but please cut me some slack. I’m a sixteen year old kid, not an evolutionary biologist. I do this for a hobby. This whole project is experimental and is subject to change in the future. With that out of the way, let’s get on with it.  

The colossal anteater (Endantotherium colossus) is a gargantuan beast that has the most peculiar diet considering its size. At around twelve feet tall at the head, it is almost entirely an insectivore. That means its diet relies mainly on bugs and other small invertebrates. Its appetite and adaptations seem very specialized, but its feeding habits seem more generalistic once one considers the variety of insects and other bugs that exist. To understand why the colossal anteater is the way it is, one must first understand its diet. One of its favorite foods are the termites responsible for the giant mounds that have appeared all throughout its habitat. As a matter of fact, these enormous mounds were one of the driving factors in the anteater’s evolution. Larger anteaters had an easier time attacking the termite mounds. 

Another favorite food that also acted as a driving force in their evolution were bees, wasps, and their hives. The taller the anteater, the easier it was to attack beehives and hornet nests resting high in the trees. Hornet and wasp nests provide a wealthy amount of food to these bizarre beasts, supplying eggs, larvae, and even adult insects. But beehives are truly where it’s at for the anteaters. Bees are typically smaller and more numerous than wasps or hornets, meaning they are easier to consume and there’s a whole lot more of them. Not only that, but their hives are filled with eggs, larvae, and honey. Colossal anteaters love honey and slurp up gallons of it every month. They will also eat some of the bee wax, making beehives a favorite of the endantotherium. 

Termite mounds and bee hives might be their regular meals, but they have plenty of other snacks to dine on. With surprising flexibility, colossal anteaters can get very close to the ground, finding loads of food there. They dig straight down into the ground, uprooting invertebrate ecosystems. Worms, ants, and grubs are all on the menu. They will flip over large rocks and eat what little creepy crawlies they find under it. They’ll tear into rotting logs with their claws to feast on all the centipedes, beetles, and maggots who reside within them. They’ll pry open dead trees looking for the same thing. They even look for evidence of bug burrows in living trees to tear open and dine on. 

Aphids and caterpillars are also welcomed snacks, along with grasshoppers, praying mantises, and even spiders. Water bugs are also not safe. Colossal anteaters are big animals and heat up very fast. This causes them to spend a lot of time in ponds and swamps, splashing in the water to cool off. Sometimes they suck up water bugs while they enjoy a refreshing day at the watering hole. They also benefit from yearly swarms of insects, such as mayflies and cicadas. Both species provide feasts for these titanic insectivores. Hunting cicadas also encouraged greater heights in their evolutionary journey. 

Colossal anteaters may be specialized to eat bugs, but they are not specialized to a specific kind of bug. They’ll eat almost anything with six or more legs, whether it be ants, millipedes, or spiders. Their generalistic approach to dining on invertebrates has proved very beneficial for such a large creature. However, they are not restricted to invertebrates. In rare conditions, colossal anteaters have raided the nests of birds, reptiles, and amphibians for nutritious eggs. Their claws are just as effective in tearing down bird nests and digging up reptile nests as they are tearing down beehives and digging up ant colonies. They’ve also been observed scavenging. Sometimes, they’ll find the corpse of a large animal and consume the maggots and flies feasting on the carcass itself. However, they’ve been known in very rare cases to lick the blood from the rotting body, getting a little extra nutrition that way. 

Now having an understanding of the bizarre beast’s appetite, it’s time to actually talk about its adaptations. As said, larger and taller anteaters evolved to have an easier time attacking beehives, giant termite mounds, and other sources of hard to reach food. To reach higher, they grew longer forelimbs that make their overall stance taller. These longer arms also help with reaching farther up. Their extremely long head also helps the anteater reach difficult spots for feeding. The slender snout, just like in modern anteaters, helps these future anteaters get food inside of small openings, such as cracks in tree bark or holes in anthills. Odd for their size and relatively warm habitat, these creatures still retain a lot of hair in adulthood. While the tail and arms are covered in longer hairs, however, the body itself is covered in a thin layer of fur to help combat this overheating issue. They also like to cool off in mud baths and ponds, as stated above.

Their claws are long and extremely powerful, capable of slicing through concrete-like dirt mounds. Their claws also double as great defense against predators along with their size. Their tongues are similar to their modern ancestors’, being very lengthy and flexible. Since it preys on nearly every terrestrial invertebrate in the Americas, the anteaters have developed high tolerances and some outright immunities to many bug bites and stings. Many spider venoms have little to no effect on them. Ant and termite toxins barely bother them. They can even shake off the nastiest of hornet stings. Of course, this has forced their prey into an evolutionary arms race to out-venom the colossal anteater. While the anteaters might be winning right now, a few species of ants and termites have evolved to have even stronger bites that do affect the anteaters exponentially more. A specific species of termite has even adapted to spray a powerful toxin from their mouths and have the instincts to go directly for the anteater’s eyes. Despite all of that, the anteater still can resist the majority of insect attacks.  

The colossal anteater is a primarily solitary creature, roaming about the wilderness alone. Contrary to that behavior, large groups of them do periodically form to feed on something I have yet to describe. These behemoths get a lot of parasites. Leeches, lice, and ticks make homes in their fur coats. Even with their mighty claws, anteaters struggle to get rid of these nasty parasites by themselves. To free themselves of bloodsuckers, colossal anteaters perform a strange behavior. After enough scratching and irritation of skin, they will produce a specific pheromone. When producing a lot of this pheromone, anteaters will find a small territory and coat the area in this scent. They urinate and rub themselves against the trees and ground. Other anteaters pick up on the scent, attracting them to the area. There, a large group will gather to pick and feed off of others’ parasites. This provides the anteaters with a snack and frees them of bloodsuckers.

These gatherings last from a couple of days up to a few weeks. The gatherings can number anything from two to fifty anteaters at a time. The larger the gathering often means the greater the action. Colossal anteaters use these rare moments of social interaction to establish themselves in the otherwise solitary anteater society. Large males will use the opportunity to show off to the most females they can. They strut up and down the group, presenting their physiques to potential mates. To earn supremacy over the gathering, the largest and strongest males will battle each other. These duels can be brutal. Some of them even end as fights to the death. No matter how dangerous they are, winners of these battles impress the females in a gathering, making them viable mating options. 

After mating, females will remain pregnant for about a year. They raise their children alone, rarely even attending the local parasite gatherings. Their offspring actually act as a sort of parasite control, dining on their mother’s ticks and lice. The mothers will also pick bugs from their young’s coats. Gatherings like these are also not desirable for females with infants considering they are already dealing with a child. However, as the anteaters get older, their mothers will start taking them to gatherings. For the first six months, the baby latches onto its mothers back and rides her around. After those six months, the baby will begin walking on its own, albeit under close supervision from its mother. At around five years of age, the young anteater leaves its mother and starts on its new life of solitude. 

The colossal anteater is a bizarre titan of the Americas. Almost a pure insectivore, these beasts can measure up to twelve feet high at the head. Their strong claws and even stronger immunities make them effective invertebrate predators. They are mainly loners but gather to free themselves of lice, ticks, and leeches. During these meetings, they fight for mates. The colossal anteater is a strange and spectacular descendant of today’s modern giant anteaters; it is truly a sight to behold. 

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I have a few final notes about the creation of this animal. First of all, the design for Endantotherium colossus mainly comes from combining the characteristics of giant anteaters (obviously) and extinct giant ground sloths. Both animals are actually related to each other, both being in the xenarthra family (which includes armadillos, sloths, and anteaters). Their body plans are a little similar, meaning it isn’t entirely out of the realm of possibility that they might experience convergent evolution with each other.

There are a few realism problems I thought of when designing the colossal anteater. First of all was the diet in relation to such a large animal. I wasn’t sure if such an enormous creature could depend on a menu nearly entirely compiled of insects and other bugs. To combat this issue, I made the appetite of this animal include almost every kind of creepy crawly I could think of. I personally would like to believe that this would be enough to supply an animal of this size with food, but I am unsure. I am certainly not an expert on the nutritional value of bugs. I’m not even an evolutionary scientist. I’m a sixteen year old who likes doing this for fun. 

The other issue I thought of was the possibility of this creature overheating. With the coat of hair it has combined with its enormous size, I think it is a solid issue that its fur might trap too much heat. An obvious adaptation that could’ve combated this issue is it losing its hair, like an elephant or rhinoceros. However, I imagined a naked colossal anteater and I did not like it one bit, so I decided to keep the hair for looks sake. Clearly there are some issues in its design, and it is not the most realistic idea by any means. Regardless, I think it is a fun idea for a fictional animal and wanted to share. If an actual biologist does happen to read this and would like to give me some pointers, comment below. I’d always love to learn more about evolution and animals. With all of that said, I hope you enjoyed learning about Endantotherium colossus, the colossal anteater.