ORYCTEROPUS, the name given by M. Geoffroy, professor of zoology in the French museum of natural history, to the animal called by other zoologists Myrmecophaga Capensis. (See MYRMECOPHAGA, Encycl.) He considers it as a distinct genus, and seems indeed to have proved, by a comparison of the organs of the orycteropus with those of the tatus desipus of Linnaeus, and of the myrmecophagi, that this genus is intermediate, by its forms and habits, between those two families. It approaches to the tatus in its organs of mastication, and the form of the toes and nails, and in having a short and single excaum, whilst that of the myrmecophagi is double, as in birds, by the reuniting of the bones of the os pubis, which are not articulated together in the myrmecophagi. The orycteropus, however, bears a relation to the last, since it has, like them, a very small mouth, whence its tongue, covered with hair, may be protruded to a considerable length. Finally, the habits of the orycteropus resemble those of the animals to which it approaches the most; it does not climb trees, but lives under the earth like the tatus;
Aerostatus; it feeds like them on roots, but also it hunts after anthills, like the myrmecophagi. Its snout terminates in a blunt callous; a character which is peculiar to it. It may be distinguished in the works of naturalists by the following description:
Orycteropus. Molar teeth (six) with flat vertices; the body covered with hair.
The orycteropus, as appears from the preceding, connects the tatus with the myrmecophagi and with the pangolinis manis of Linnaeus. The large fossil species found in Paraguay, for which Citizen Cuvier has established a new genus, under the name of megaterium, is intermediate between the tatus and the myrmecophagus; and, lastly, the astonishing animal of New Holland, covered with bristles like the porcupine, supported by very short legs, and of very singular conformation, and with a head round at the occiput, terminating in a snout, without teeth, very slender, long, and cylindrical, and described by Mr George Shaw under the name of myrmecophaga aculeata, appears to have very striking relations to the pangolin and the orycteropus: from hence it follows, that in consequence of these important acquisitions, we ought for the future to count, in the number of our natural orders, that of the edentated, or edentate, consisting of the following genera: Dasypus, orycteropus myrmecophaga, and aculeata, manis, myrmecophaga, megaterium et bradyptus.