RANGE | The southern tamandua can be found in southeastern Mexico throughout Central America, including Peru, Venezuela, northern Argentina and parts of Brazil.

FUN FACTS | Unlike the Giant anteater, which spends its entire life on the ground, the tamandua are equally comfortable on the ground and up in the trees. Equipped with a prehensile tail that acts like a safety rope, they typically sleep in the trees during the day and are awake most of the night, searching for food. While they are omnivores and can use their sharp claws to tear into sweet juicy fruits and berries, the primary source of food for these predators is typically social insects, such as ants, termites and bees. Tamandua are toothless animals that possess a long, skinny and sticky barbed tongue that is longer than a ruler. The insects become adhered to her tongue as they move from insect colony to insect colony, enabling these animals to eat up to 9000 ants in a single night.

Liana was an unexpected birth at a wildlife education facility. Her parents were quite old and had only reproduced once since despite being housed together for more than a decade. The father passed away when he was over 15 years old, just one month before Liana was born. The staff had no idea that the mother was pregnant, until they walked into the enclosure one morning and there was a baby on her back! Unfortunately, the mother then passed away just days later. The team there raised Liana and planned to integrate her into an enclosure with a different kind of anteater, but it wasn’t working. She had become so bonded to people that she had no interest in another anteater. The other anteaters, not understanding her behavior, began hurting her, so the facility called us.

Liana just wants to play! All the time. She loves to climb on us, play with us, follow us and be held any chance she gets. Her den is on a play structure and is always filled with soft fleece blankets. Since she is a tropical animal, we created a heated indoor enclosure that keeps her nice and warm, and she always has access to an outdoor space as well. Her living space has a toddler play structure, logs and stumps to climb, and a hammock made from old firehose. She loves anything that she can climb in, on, under or over!

She loves to climb so we are constantly trying to give her new play structures, hammocks and swings. These items enable her to move in ways similar to moving up, down and among the branches and vines in the rainforest. She also really enjoys crawling into small spaces—as a tamandua would wedge into a crevice in a tree in the rainforest—so heavy duty plastic crates and bins that we can suspend from the ceiling are always interesting to her. One of her favorite hanging items was an upside dogloo with a fleece blanket. In fact, Liana is more than a little spoiled and loves to curl up on a pile of soft fleece blankets after a busy night, every night. She is unexpectedly strong and destructive so toys need to be incredibly durable or they won’t last a minute with her talon-like claws.