Blog

As part of our animal rehabilitation and release program, we’ve been working with several tamanduas (or giant anteaters) that came to us a few months ago. We previously released Antony and Junior, leaving us with Mom and Aninha.

Mom had been with us the longest, and we made sure to spend less time around her enclosure lately, distancing ourselves from her visually, so that she became less accustomed to humans around. When it came time to relocate her she was actually the most reluctant of all to deal with her humans when going into the crate. This was encouraging because of the extended time she spent with us due to her head trauma that caused her need for rehab. As you’ll see in the video, Mom was navigating the outside world quickly and confidently. 

Aninha is still young, about a year old, but her feeding behaviors and her weight made her a good candidate for release. She’s been showing a lot of natural behaviors, seeking out and interacting with logs, termite mounds, and fresh dirt piles we put in her enclosure. We introduced the crate with a little bit of special food inside it, and she was curious enough that she walked right in and ate contentedly while we closed the doors. So we drove her in the same direction as Antony but a bit closer and released her into the woods near a creek. She came out of the crate, sniffed around, and pretty immediately started digging for bugs at the base of a tree. We think both of them will do well back in nature where they belong.