Why a Nat Geo Photographer Spent 3 Years With Elusive Giant Anteaters

Between 2017 and 2020, 766 giant anteaters were found dead along highways in Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil.

The dramatic increase in deaths has coincided with an agriculture boom that is clearing the anteaters’ natural habitat to make way for fields and the roads needed to transport crops. Anteaters—slow-moving wanderers by nature—are being struck by this new road traffic. These accidents have drastically reduced the species’ population and often leave behind orphaned anteater pups. Pups require specialized diets and may have health issues. Even in rehabilitation centers, pups may not survive.

National Geographic Explorer and photographer Fernando Faciole spent three years documenting the threats facing giant anteaters in Brazil, splitting his time between the struck anteaters languishing on road shoulders, and the resulting orphaned pups in rehab centers. He traveled across anteater habitat in Brazil’s Cerrado, a tropical savannah, and the Pantanal, the world’s largest tropical wetland. While documenting these collisions, Faciole also found reasons to be hopeful; better fences and passageways could help anteaters avoid danger.

Here, Faciole shares the technical and emotional challenges he encountered on this assignment. You can see more of his photos featured in our September issue here.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What sparked your interest in Giant Anteaters?

When I was around 15, I saw a giant anteater for the first time while fishing with my dad by a lake in central Brazil. I remember being completely fascinated by it.

Years later in 2016, while volunteering at a hotel in Costa Rica’s Osa Peninsula, I had another encounter that stayed with me. One night, while guiding a group of tourists, a giant anteater walked right in front of us… and then climbed a tree. Only later did I learn that giant anteaters had been considered locally extinct in that region for decades, which gave that encounter an almost ethereal quality. I had no camera with me, so I could never prove what I saw, but I never forgot it either.

When the Wild Animal Conservation Institute called me in 2023 about a story on giant anteaters in Brazil, it immediately felt personal. It was a chance to tell the story of an animal that had fascinated me since I was a kid, while also looking at the much bigger ecological challenges surrounding its survival.

What did an average week of documenting the Giant Anteaters look like?

The weeks I spent photographing giant anteaters were never the same.

When I began this story in 2023, my focus was on documenting the work of biologists and veterinarians who were monitoring animals, adjusting tracking collars, and carrying out health checks. Experts were also beginning to establish a reference for what a healthy giant anteater heart should look like, research that could help improve the rehabilitation of orphaned young in captivity.

Then we encountered Ty [an anteater]. We had monitored him and adjusted his collar, and the very next day he was hit by a car. He was the first animal in this story to become a victim of a road collision, and for me, that moment changed the direction of the story.

From then on, I began focusing more directly on road collisions, joining active searches along highways . At the same time, I visited rehabilitation centers across Brazil. There, my attention was drawn mostly to the young anteaters: fragile animals being bottle-fed, cared for around the clock, exercising, and slowly building the strength they would need for a possible return to the wild.

But another essential part of the story was simply being with anteaters in their natural habitat. I traveled through different regions of the Cerrado and Pantanal, including areas along Brazilian highway BR-262.

While photographing at Barranco Alto Farm in the Pantanal, my friend and guide was Lydia Möcklinghoff, a German researcher who had been studying giant anteater behavior in the Pantanal for more than 14 years. Lydia had an incredible ability to find these animals. I spent unforgettable days with her, lying on our bellies photographing anteaters, walking through the Pantanal, and watching what felt like endless sunrises and sunsets. Sadly, in July 2026, Lydia died in a plane crash while once again on her way to the Pantanal. Lydia, you will be remembered as an extraordinary researcher and, to me, a great friend.

What were some of the technical challenges you encountered on this assignment?

One of the challenges of photographing giant anteaters is that people don't really understand their body shape. Some people [look at the species and say] “oh, is that a panda with two heads?” Sometimes I take close up shots so people can properly see their eyes and ears and understand the proportions.

It's also very hard to photograph giant anteaters because they can camouflage very well and have nocturnal habits. You can spend a whole day trying to find them, and you won't see them. But as soon as the sun starts to go down, they wake up and start to walk around. But at night, the light isn’t good anymore, so you have to run to try to get a good picture.

Another challenge was that, while they can’t see very well, they can smell very well. In the field, we had to be aware of the wind direction so that the animal couldn’t smell us. Sometimes we’d throw a bit of sand in the air to check the wind direction.

How did you track down dead anteaters on the road?

We know that the BR-262 highway in Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil is considered one of the deadliest roads [in the world] for wildlife, including giant anteaters and other large mammals. It is also where a new federal mitigation plan is being implemented For that reason, our searches usually began there, crossing both the Cerrado and the Pantanal before continuing onto the network of roads connected to it.

My main field partner for documenting collisions was veterinarian Grazielle Soresini. We would wake up very early to make the most of the morning light, and also because many collisions happen during the night. Then we would drive for hours and hours, often with very little rest. Grazi, as we call her, became an essential partner during this part of the project.

Each night, we slept somewhere different along the route and continued the next morning, with small flags hanging from the car windows so other drivers would understand why we were moving slowly. Whenever we found something, we pulled onto the shoulder to photograph it. It was delicate work that demanded caution and quick decisions. Traffic moved fast, the wind from passing cars was constantly knocking over my light diffuser, and the moment we stepped out of the car, mosquitoes seemed to cover us. Every stop had to be precise.

Once, I asked Grazi to stop because I thought I spotted a parrot that had been hit by a car. I thought it could make an important photograph. We stopped a little farther ahead, walked back along the road while being eaten alive by mosquitoes, and when we finally reached it, we discovered it was a piece of lettuce. [He laughs] Sorry, Grazi!

You followed these animals for there years. I imagine seeing dead anteaters on the road and orphaned pups in the rehab centers was difficult. What emotional toll did this story take on you? And how do you handle those emotions in the field?

Dealing with the emotional side was definitely one of the biggest challenges of this story. It’s not easy to see animals lying dead or suffering along the roads.

At the same time, I had to toughen up enough to keep working, while also using that pain to create images that could make people feel something. The photograph of Grazi holding the anteater by the side of the road is one example of that. I think my own sadness, helplessness, and empathy was in the image, and hopefully that perspective reached the people seeing the photograph as well.

Before talking about possible solutions, I wanted people to first connect emotionally with the problem.

At the rehabilitation centers, emotions were more mixed, and I tried to bring that into the images too. One example is the photograph of the young anteater, Cali, running after its caregiver just after being bottle-fed. What I felt in that moment was a mix of sorrow and hope, and that’s what I wanted the image to carry.

Your photographs also captured the heavy toll these roadside collisions have on the humans studying and rehabilitating giant anteaters.

It's very tough work for scientists who dedicate their lives to protecting these animals. There were some days that we saw as many as three giant anteaters dead along the road, and these scientists had to stop to collect biological samples. They had to remove their corpses from the road. It's very delicate work because I wanted to show people what is happening, but at the same time, it's heartbreaking.

Photographing these animals and the rehabilitation centers was tough as well, because these pups should be with out in the wild with their mothers, but now they are relying on human care.

Then after months of providing intense care, the scientists must reintroduce these animals into the wild. They need to break any bond they created; they can’t have any contact.

What do you hope people take away from your photographs?

I’d love for people to get to know giant anteaters better. They’re such beautiful, strange-looking animals, and even in Brazil and across Latin America, many people still know very little about them or their ecological importance.

But more importantly, I want people to understand the impact of rapidly expanding road networks, and that there are solutions that can make roads safer for both wildlife and people. Wildlife crossings are a big part of that. Giant anteaters became the face of this problem in Brazil and the reason to implement solutions, and now I hope it can become a model for other roads across Brazil and beyond.