The southern tamandua's tail is prehensile and naked on the underside, where bare skin gives purchase on bark. In the canopy the tail acts as a fifth limb, freeing the forelimbs to tear open arboreal ant and termite nests. On the ground the same tail becomes a rear leg of a tripod, and the animal adopts an upright defensive posture with its long foreclaws raised.
Those claws are the reason the posture works. They are large enough that a tamandua walks on the outer edges of its forefeet to avoid driving them into its own palms. The animal also carries strong anal-gland secretions, which is where the folk name stinker of the forest comes from.
A common misconception treats tamanduas as purely tree-dwelling. Observation shows a substantial share of foraging on the ground, varying by habitat. What remains uncertain is how the vest-patterned and plain colour forms are distributed and whether the variation carries any ecological meaning or is simply regional.