{"id":506682,"date":"2026-04-01T07:32:07","date_gmt":"2026-04-01T07:32:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/506682\/"},"modified":"2026-04-01T07:32:07","modified_gmt":"2026-04-01T07:32:07","slug":"blackpool-zoo-welcomes-vulnerable-giant-anteater-pup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/506682\/","title":{"rendered":"Blackpool Zoo welcomes &#8216;vulnerable&#8217; giant anteater pup"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Jason Keller, senior keeper, said: &#8220;Giant anteaters are such a unique species and every birth is really important for their conservation.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;They are classified as vulnerable to extinction in the wild and, with populations in continued decline, they are considered the most threatened mammal in Central America.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;The new arrival is already able to walk around on its own but, like all baby anteaters, prefers the safety of mum for now.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Giant anteaters have black and white diagonal stripes, dense shaggy hair and super-sized snouts.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">They have no teeth and instead of biting and chewing, they use their long tongues to lap up thousands of ants or termites a day in the wild.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">They hail from the swamps, grasslands and humid forests in areas from Southern Belize to northern Argentina and they are the last living species to have evolved on South America when it was an isolated continent, the zoo said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jason Keller, senior keeper, said: &#8220;Giant anteaters are such a unique species and every birth is really important&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":506683,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[90,56,54,55,4407],"class_list":["post-506682","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506682","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=506682"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/506682\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/506683"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=506682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=506682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=506682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}