There are many animals without teeth, but almost every animal has some kind of jaws it can open and close to take in food. Except the anteater!
This strange-looking creature from South America appears to have no mouth, for his snout is shaped like a tube and contains neither teeth nor jaws.
Then how does the anteater eat? . . . With his tongue! The anteater’s tongue is very long, sometimes over a foot in length, and very sticky. The anteater searches for an ant hill, rips it open with his paws, and licks up dozens of ants with a single swipe of his tongue. Then the anteater sucks his tongue back into his tube-like snout and swallows the ants in one gulp!
A creature that eats only ants may seem harmless, but the anteater is strong and vicious. He has sharp claws on his front feet and a sharp spine behind those claws that can punch a hole in an animal’s flesh. And the giant anteater may be as big as a bear!
There are also countless invertebrates that have neither teeth nor jaws, but still manage to ingest food just fine. Here are just a few: clams, most snails, true bugs, butterflies and moths, sea squirts, sea stars, and many endoparasites, some of which don’t even have mouths (e.g., tapeworms). There are even some non-parasitic worms that don’t have mouths or guts—deep-sea worms like pogonophorans and the “giant tubeworms” around hydrothermal vents.
how about 26 teeth?