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The Anteater is a strange-looking mammal belonging to the eater family. It is a distant relative of the Cookieeater and the Flying Purple People Eater, both of which are threatened with extinction by the media. It is the only creature on earth known for eating ants as a source of protein. The identical aardvarks tend to be more fond of cheeseburgers but are unable to find any on the African savannah, leading them to hunt ants due to the similar taste. The main difference between anteaters and aardvarks is that one of them looks like a deformed pig with donkey ears.
Anteaters are often subject to the misfortune of having the least creative name in the animal kingdom. Apparently whoever discovered them was too lazy to give them a better name. This was probably the same person who named the grasshopper and the woodpecker. On the plus side, this makes it easy to know what anteaters eat. If you don't know what they eat, then maybe you should read this instead.
A typical anteater is covered with fur. It also bears a long curved head with a tube-shaped snout, which many people wrongly think is a trunk. As a result, anteaters are usually drawn to look like elephants, which they are not related to in any way. At the tip of the snout is the anteater's tiny mouth opening. Although anteaters are toothless, they are well known for having absurdly long tongues that are used to catch helpless and succulent ants. Among other things.
Anteaters are found exclusively in the rain forests and grasslands of Mexico, Central America, and South America. They commonly inhabit areas in or near places with a high ant population, such as picnic sites, a decaying whale carcass, and your kitchen floor.
Some lost, cold, hungry anteaters have occasionally been found in Antarctica, most likely because it has the word ant in its name. I have no idea why they would give that name to something that isn't at all involved with ants whatsoever. If it did have ants, then perhaps they evolved into penguins and learned how to swim. Anteaters can neither swim nor stuff a big, pudgy penguin into its tiny mouth.
edit Why anteaters only eat ants
A little known fact is that anteaters evolved from creatures that ate solely candy and other sugary treats. This diet made them morbidly obese, fooling people into believing they are the descendants of Walruses and hippopotami. They became an endangered species due to being poked by sticks, ridiculed from skinny people, and deadly heart attacks. The species gradually faced extinction and its later descendants learned how to eat ants through a well-constructed plan by nature.
Due to their nutritional requirements, anteaters can only eat ants (and the occasional termite or antelope). Were an anteater were to eat anything else, its bowels would shut down and it would explode. However, at rare times, anteaters get a tendency to lick human beings the way dogs do
A hungry anteater would approach an anthill and wait for the right moment to attack. Once that moment comes, the anteater will bust through the anthill like the Hulk and slurp up as many ants as possible using its tongue. Any ant caught by the tongue will be pulled into the anteater's stomach - which is actually a black hole that some speculate leads into another dimension. I don't know. I'm not an ant. Even if I were, I still wouldn't know because I would be dead.
The anteater will then move to the next closest anthill to repeat the process. An anteater can eat at around 30,000 ants in a single day. This is probably because ants are tiny. Let's see them eat a million waffles in a single day...oh wait, they CAN'T!
A fully-grown anteater has few natural predators, most notably the Anteater-eater, a large carnivorous mammal which can easily kill any anteater in sight. Anteater-eating anteaters can also be a problem in some areas. Anteaters avoid anteater-eating ants, most likely because they are a kink in the food chain. The anteater-eating burrito also used to be a threat until it was hunted to extinction two years ago. Other than these, anteaters don't have much else to worry about... except terrorists.
edit Man-eating anteaters
Man-eating anteaters are a rare yet deadly monstrosity set upon the world by mad science. At the birth of the world's first man-eating anteater, the scientific community realized their mistake, but were too late to destroy it as the creature killed half of them and flew out the window.
Man-eating anteaters look very identical to ant-eating anteaters. If you come across an anteater that you think is a man-eating anteater, you could try throwing a porterhouse steak in its face. Usually, it will run away crying. If by chance it eats it, it's a man-eater. If ever you are faced with this problem, you should either run, beat it to death with a baseball bat, or, the best option, call your neighbour: You may have a chance to escape while your neighbour gets eaten instead.
edit The future of anteaters
“Each time you don't kill an ant, you also don't kill an anteater.”
People are becoming increasingly aware of the anteater's survival in the wild. The growing number of ant infestations has lead to more demands for bug repellent, exterminators, fumigators, and magnifying glasses in an attempt to wipe ants off our planet forever. More and more anteaters face starvation as a result. Al Gore presented this scenario on his recent documentary Save the Ants, Save the Anteaters - released during Anteater Awareness Month - as means of foretelling the species' potential endangerment.
One effort being made to prevent the plight of both species is conservation programs encouraging people to buy pet anteaters. They unsurprisingly make convenient pest controllers. Unfortunately, they don't make very good pets, as they tend to throw loud parties at night and stick their long tongues into certain places you don't want them to.