Most people are not biologists, so they cannot tell one kind of anteater from another kind. They don't know what convergent evolution is, so they don't know that animals that are not closely related can evolve to look similar. Sometimes convergent evolution can be so remarkable that it can fool even biologists. For example, biologists were surprised a few years ago when DNA evidence shows that the closest living relatives of falcons are not hawks and eagles, but parrots and perching or passerine birds. Similarly, some scientists are making the same mistake about birds and dinosaurs. They believe that birds evolved from a theropod dinosaur, when in fact dinosaurs like Deinonychus are only convergently similar to birds. The real ancestor of birds is a small, arboreal, gliding, feathered reptile cllosely related to Longisquama insignis, if not Longisquama itself.
The aardvark and anteater are not related. The anteater belongs to the same order as slots. No other living mammal belongs to the same order as aardvarks.
