Alternate Theories to Explain the Greenwich Anteater’s Immaculate Conception

An anteater at the Greenwich (Conn.) zoo gave birth to a baby in April, and no one knows how it was conceived:

[In April, an animal] tender went into Armani’s enclosure and received quite a shock.

Armani, sometime during the previous night, had given birth to another baby.

The sudden appearance of little Archie was a surprise, to say the least. The gestation period for anteaters is six months. Armani and Alf had not been back together long enough to do what they needed to do to put the cycle of life into gear a second time.

How to explain Armani’s miracle? Let’s borrow from the Greenwich Time story:

Alf had somehow gotten the keys to Armani’s pen one night in October.

Alf had gotten the keys to Armani’s pen one night in October.

“Arghhh!” he bellowed, fumbling with the chain. He couldn’t find the right key. “Ack!” The trenchcoat was slipping off his back, and he was losing his balance on the groundhog’s shoulders.

Finally, the lock clicked, the bolt rotated, and the door swung open. “Armani,” he whispered.

Dr. Margarita Woc-Colburn […] said some scientific papers have mentioned the scenario in which an animal’s body pauses a pregnancy until environmental conditions are right.

“Mmm, yeah, I’m just not feelin’ it at the moment,” Armani announced on ladies’ night one Friday. “I’m gonna just press pause, you know?”

“My guess is they thought they had him separated,” Belhumeur said. “We’ve seen incredible feats of breeding success. We’ve had animals breed through fences.”

The chain link jiggled one final time, and Alf slowly backed away. “Arrivederci,” Armani said, into to the dark.

Belhumeur said she thinks the most likely scenario is that the two anteaters were, somehow, able to mate.

Belhumeur said she thinks the most likely scenario is that the two anteaters were, somehow, able to conduct a DIY in vitro fertilization. “I am going to dig up the entire anteater area looking for crushed glass beakers and other evidence of amateur-to-intermediate ‘science stuff’ going on,” she explained.

Off in the background, Armani winked.

[Greenwich Time | Atlantic Wire | Photo of scheming anteaters via guppiecat/Flickr]