Today the Reid Park Zoo announced there is a new baby at the zoo.
The little one doesn’t have a name yet, but is a male tamandua. His parents, 12-year-old Lety and 15-year-old Santiago welcomed their son on Aug. 31. The baby weighed 420 grams (0.9 pounds), a healthy weight for baby tamanduas.
The baby is not visible to the public yet and is spending important time bonding with his mom.
“He has been doing great,” said Katie Hutchinson, Lead Keeper at Reid Park Zoo. “He has been staying pretty close to mom by climbing onto her back and has been very curious about his environment.”
Tamanduas are a genus of anteaters and live in a variety of habitats, ranging from gallery forests next to savannas and lowland, to mountainous tropical rainforests. They eat ants and termites and don’t have any teeth. Tamanduas have a long, sticky tongue that scoops up to 9,000 ants per day!
Updates about the new baby tamandua will be posted on the Reid Park Zoo Facebook page.
This article appears in Sep 6-12, 2018.
