Some animal species are really well studied, while others still have many secrets left that we have yet to uncover. For the Silky anteater (Cyclopes didactylus), the latter statement applies! This cute little anteater is found in Central and South America, where it is pretty common. However, it is arboreal, meaning that it lives in the trees and does not have to climb down from them in order to do its day-to-day activities.
A Silky anteater (and no, I can’t tell you which of the new species it is). Image by Quinten Questel, posted with the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
A small, tree-living anteater is obviously difficult to study, and to make matters worse, they are also nocturnal. This might the the reason why we have been thinking of these animals as one species from they were described in 1758 up until now.
How the Silky anteater might become 7 different species
Flávia Miranda and colleagues from the Brazil's Federal University of Minas Gerais were doing a long-term study about the Silky anteaters. They had to overcome huge hurdles to capture them, and had to ask native people about how to track and capture them. Getting their hands of the first anteater took over two years from the beginning of the study, but by the time they were finished with the study, a total of 33 living specimen were used.
During the collection of these, the scientists started to think that the Silky anteater might actually be two different species. This lead them to doing more tests of the anteaters, and in addition to testing the genetic material of the 33 individuals they captured, they also got material from 280 preserved specimen.
Once all the test have been run, the paper suggests that there are a total of 7 different species, all belonging to the Cyclopes genus.
Findings such as this one really shows that we still have so much to learn about the animals around us, and “difficult” animals like this one often have huge gaps that need to be filled with knowledge. Information about this being seven different species is extremely important if we want to conserve the species as well. Up until now the silky anteaters have not been protected because they are abundant, but now that they are so many different species, we might start to look to find out if all of them are abundant, or if some of them require protection.
In fact, Flávia Miranda believes that at least two of the species are threatened by extinction, but this is her estimate, and not backed by any research (yet). Now that these are officially recognized, the IUCN will be able to evaluate them, and give them a status to determine their level of endangerment. Once this is done, the local government can start to form protective laws or protected areas for them, all of which is possible because of this research!
Thanks for reading
More information can be found in the paper published about the seven species, and in this article at National Geographic. I hope you enjoyed learning about the Silky anteater, and make sure to leave a comment below!