Also 7 tamendoa. [Pg. tamandua (in Gandavo, Historia, 1576, tamendoa), a. Tupi tamanduà. (See J. Platt, in Athenæum, 19 Oct., 1901, 525.) So F. tamandua (1694 in Hatz.-Darm.), Sp. tamándoa.]
† a. Originally, a name for the Brazilian Ant-eaters generally, including the Great Ant-eater or Ant-bear, Myrmecophaga jubata (in Tupi tamandua guaçu).
1614. Purchas, Pilgrimage, IX. iv. (ed. 2), 835. The Tamendoas are as big as a Ram, with long and sharp snouts, a taile like a squirrell, (twice as long as the body and hairy).
1693. Phil. Trans., XVII. 851. The Tamandua or Ant-bear.
[1753. Chambers, Cycl. Supp., Tamandua,… called in English the ant-bear, and by the Brasilians tamandua-guaçu.]
1774. Goldsm., Nat. Hist. (1776), IV. 338. The larger tamandua, the smaller tamandua, and the ant eater.
b. Now generally restricted by naturalists to the smaller Tamandua tetradactyla, and its congeners.
1834. Penny Cycl., II. 65/1. The Tamandua (Myrmecophaga tamandua, Cuvier,) or second species of ant-eater, is an animal much inferior to the great ant-bear in point of size, being scarcely so large as a good-sized cat.
1849. [see next]
1851. Owen in Phil. Trans., CXLI. 744. In the Tamandua (Myrmecophaga Tamandua) … all the cervical vertebræ have spinous processes except the atlas.
1896. List Anim. Zool. Soc., 198. Tamandua tetradactyla, Tamandua Ant-eater.
1903. Westm. Gaz., 17 Feb., 10/2. A new and interesting arrival at the Zoological Gardens is the Tamandua ant-eater,… a native of the forests of tropical America, where it leads an entirely arboreal life.
