A small anteater that lives in trees and feeds mainly on ants.
Its yellow-brown coat has gray on the rump, legs and tail. Irregular black stripes run along the back and underside.
In May 2008 at Baía Formosa in Brazil’s Rio Grande do Norte, one author encountered a fisherman holding a silky anteater. The fisherman said he had found it in nearby forest. The paper presents this as the state’s first record with a precise location. The site was about 50 m from Mata Estrela Private Reserve, beside the state’s largest Atlantic Forest remnant.
The nearest earlier specimen record with a documented location was from Mamanguape in neighbouring Paraíba, about 40 km away. The authors say the find confirms the species in the reserve’s surroundings, where it probably came from, but it does not provide a current population estimate. They call for new surveys of local distribution and population status.
An extinction-risk assessment has not been added yet.
Following the 2018 taxonomic revision, the 2021 paper treats the common silky anteater (Cyclopes didactylus) as having separate populations in the northern Amazon and northeastern Brazil's Atlantic Forest. It documents a 2008 record near a forest reserve in Rio Grande do Norte and recommends surveys to establish current occurrence. This is an old, single-location record; current population status and a global category, assessment date, or trend are not confirmed here.