Photo of the Day #795: Giant anteater

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A giant anteater (Myrmecophaga tridactyla), photographed at the National Zoo in Washington, DC.


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A close-up shot of a giant anteater (Myrmecophaga tridactyla), photographed at the National Zoo in Washington, DC.
A giant anteater (Myrmecophaga tridactyla), photographed at the National Zoo.
A giant anteater (Myrmecophaga tridactyla), photographed at the National Zoo.
A giant anteater (Myrmecophaga tridactyla), photographed at the National Zoo.

Xenarthrans! All I want for Christmas is a Megatherium.

By blueshifter (not verified) on 17 Dec 2009 #permalink

Nice shot. After numerous misses, I finally saw the mom and young'en a few weeks ago. I never thought they would look goofier than the anteater on the Pink Panther cartoons, but I think they had him licked.

They were very cute tho, and didn't take lip from a wisecracking cartoon ant either...

Regarding your recent piece on whale evolution, I came across a claim by a YEC baraminologist that proposed whale intermediates are not actually intermediates - http://toddcwood.blogspot.com/2009/12/what-about-transitional-forms.html . Normally I would ignore YEC claims about such things but Todd Wood is regarded as one of the more honest 'creation scientists' - http://toddcwood.blogspot.com/2009/09/truth-about-evolution.html . He links to page 12 of this PDF (not page 10 as he says in the article) - http://documents.clubexpress.com/documents.ashx?key=6FyKwSXHsz57v8ZJrts… . I was intrigued by this and wondered what you thought.

Ben; Thanks for the links, but, frankly, it is all baloney. I don't care how "honest" Wood might seem; he does not provide any compelling evidence for his fantastic claims. He uses the meaningless jargon of "baraminology" to shift goalposts and he foolishly treats archaeocetes as a homogenous group (as if Pakicetus and Basilosaurus and Kutchicetus were the same!). I am sorry to be so curt, but all Wood has done is show his allegiance to his particular religious ideology. Writing up a scientific reply to his assertions would be pointless because what he is proposing is so heavily influenced by his beliefs.