Baby anteater gets great service in Berlin
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Benita, a baby anteater born in December at the Berlin Zoo (a place that’s no stranger to adorable baby animals), is being bottle-fed by her keepers because her mother was unable to feed her.
Fun fact: Baby anteaters are known for emitting a ‘high-pitched screech worthy of a velociraptor.’ The Washington Post explains:
The shriek is what keeps it alive: Anteater mothers are fairly blind and none too bright, and the cry kicks in the mothering instinct. ‘It’s like, ‘What’s this noise? What’s this noise? What’s this noise? I gotta make it stop,’ ‘ [National Zoo animal keeper Marie Magnuson] said. ‘Kind of like humans and crying.’ It’s also probably why some baby anteaters born in captivity have died: Their easy-to-startle fathers have wound up killing them. ‘The sound kind of freaks them out,’ Magnuson said. And they start slashing with their razor-sharp claws -- which can beat back a jaguar attack -- to make the noise go away.
Here’s hoping Benita can learn to keep the noise to a minimum!
--Lindsay Barnett