Keith Bottriell, age 10, of Ottawa, Canada, for his question:

Does an anteater really walk on his knuekles?

The assorted anteaters are strange looking animals. If one of each type sat under your Christmas tree, you might think that you had been invaded by visitors from a dozen different planets. But every anteater needs strong claws to make a living. Some Of them have very long claws curved under their front feet. These anteaters seem to walk along on their knuckles.

The echidna is spiked like a small porcupine, and the pangolin looks like a large, living pine cone. The aardvark looks somewhat like an overgrown pig with an extra long tail and snout. The armadillo is armored like a miniature tank. All of these animals are called anteaters, because they dine mostly on ants and termites.

All of them have long, tapering noses and tongues like sticky whips. All of them have front feet suitable for tearing apart the nests of ants or termites. Some of these insects build their nests in sturdy tree trunks, some in rocky soil and some make high buildings of sun baked mud.

The Spiny echidna lives in Australia, and his hands work like little spades. Each hand has five claw like fingers bound together like the webbed foot of a duck. This fellow lives where the soil is soft, and he digs himself down out of sight in less than a minute. In the trees nearby lives the bandicoot. He is a striped, squirrel type anteater who likes to bound along like a miniature kangaroo. These anteaters do not walk on their knuckles.

The pangolin anteaters of Asia and Africa come in assorted sizes, but all of them are armor plated with sharp, overlapping triangles. The giant pangolin of tropical Africa is six feet from the tip of his tapering nose to the tip of his tapering tail. He has strong claws to dig out the nests of termites and white ants. The third. Claw on each front foot curves under, and only the outside of the foot touches the ground. The pangolin is one of the anteaters who seems to walk along on his knuckles.

There are odd looking anteaters living in the warm regions of the new World. The various armor plated armadillos amble along with their feet flea on the ground. Furry anteaters with monkey type tails live in the Jungle tree tops of Central America and seldom walk on the ground. But their cousin, the ant bear, is too big for life in the trees. The middle claw on his front foot is extra long and curved under. The so called ant bear is one of the anteaters who seems to walk on his knuckles.

This shaggy fellow may be eight feet long, and. He is not related to the bear family. He has the long, thin head and snout of the true anteater. His shaggy coat is speckled with greys, and he wears a black bib bordered with white. His feet and front legs are also white. He carries his bushy tail straight behind him, and some of its shaggy hairs are 15 inches long.