Your morning adorable: Tamandua holds his own spoon to eat cheese

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Although we don’t typically support the idea of keeping ‘exotic’ pets, we’re big fans of YouTube user TamanduaGirl‘s tamanduas, Stewie (above) and Dua. (Dua, for the record, was born in the wild but wouldn’t have survived on her own due to illness; TamanduaGirl brought her to the U.S. from Guyana and nursed her back to health. Stewie came to live with TamanduaGirl after his previous owners gave him up because of their own health concerns.)

The tamandua -- of which there are two varieties, northern and southern -- is a genus of anteater that’s native to parts of Mexico, Central and South America. As anteaters, they love to eat insects, of course -- but TamanduaGirl also feeds hers things like raw ground beef, flax meal, beans, spinach, cottage cheese, shrimp and insects (including ants).

Of course, in addition to the snacks listed above, Stewie is a big fan of cheese -- so much of a fan, in fact, that he’ll even hold his own spoon in order to eat some. Anteaters -- they’re just like us! (Well, kind of.)

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-- Lindsay Barnett

Video: TamanduaGirl via YouTube