Science Confirms: Giant Anteaters Can Kill People [View all]

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http://www.livescience.com/47113-anteaters-can-kill-people.html

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This giant anteater, Myrmecophaga tridactyla, was photographed in Manaus, Brazil, as part of a camera trap study.
Credit: Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas da Amazonia

They have poor vision, bad hearing and no teeth. And yet, anteaters can be deadly.

In a new case report, scientists detail a gruesome anteater attack that left one hunter dead in northwestern Brazil, just two years after another man was killed in a similar confrontation with one of the long-nosed creatures. While such incidents are rare and anteaters usually avoid contact with humans, the attacks should serve as a warning to humans encroaching on anteater turf, the authors wrote in the journal Wilderness and Environmental Medicine this month.

Giant anteaters, which live in savannah-like fields in South America and Central America, are the largest of the four living anteater species, growing up to 7 feet (213 centimeters) long in adulthood. They have four sharp claws on both of their forelimbs that they can use to quarry anthills and termite mounds — and apparently, to inflict fatal wounds on humans. [In Photos: The World's 10 Deadliest Animals]

The creatures assume a standing position when they feel threatened, sometimes referred to as an "anteater's hug." On the Internet, anteaters standing messiah-like with arms outstretched have become the benign stars of memes. But in the wild, an anteater posed like it wants a hug is really throwing up a red flag.