Aardvark Description, Habitat, Image, Diet, and Interesting Facts

A nocturnal feeder, it subsists on ants and termites, which it will dig out of their hills using its sharp claws and powerful legs. It also digs to create burrows in which to live and rear its young. The animal is listed as “least concern” by the IUCN, although its numbers are decreasing. Aardvarks are afrotheres, a clade which also includes elephants, manatees, and hyraxes. Ants are more plentiful during the wet season, whilst termites are more common in the dry season.

Just like what they do for termites, aardvarks locate ant colonies using their well-developed sense of smell, and they use their tongue to capture them. While ants are not as important a food source as termites for aardvarks, they are still a valuable and significant part of their diet in the wild. The aardvark is a fascinating animal that is known for its unique physical features, its ability to dig burrows, and its nocturnal behavior. Another interesting thing about aardvarks is their diet, which is primarily made up of insects – but not only.

Gestation lasts eight months, after which a female births a single cub. The baby, hairless and about six pounds, is born during a peak time of food availability—either before or during the rainy season. As burrowing mammals with porcine snouts, aardvarks are true to their name, which translates to “earth pig” in the Afrikaans language. Ants also provide a good source of protein and other nutrients for aardvarks. So they are a good alternative to termites when they are not available.

They also have long, sticky tongues that they use to capture insects, which helps to keep them at a safe distance from the insects’ mandibles. Beetles and grubs are often found in decaying logs or in the soil, and once again, it is aardvarks’ sense of smell and claws that enable them to locate and eat these insects. As other good sources of protein and other nutrients, these other insects help to supplement their diet in the wild. Aardvarks use their claws to dig up the fruit, and then use their powerful jaws to crack open the hard outer shell to access the fleshy interior.

Their population levels are stable, but they are in a somewhat precarious position. Besides their unique appearance, aardvarks have a number of other traits that you may not know about. An aardvark features as the antagonist in the cartoon The Ant and the Aardvark as well as in the Canadian animated series The Raccoons. The aardvark is known to be a good swimmer and has been witnessed successfully swimming in strong currents.[31] It can dig a yard of tunnel in about five minutes,[30] but otherwise moves fairly slowly. In Zambia and Mozambique, the bushmeat trade is a threat to aardvarks, according to the IUCN.

The split between this ancestral African stock and that leading to the ungulate, carnivore, xenarthran, and cetacean orders occurred as much as 90 million years ago. Fossils indicate that Tubulidentata was recognizable about 54 million years ago. Despite often being compared to pigs and South American anteater, aardvarks are not related to them.

Individuals were detected at multiple locations separated by up to 7 kilometers, indicating that home ranges could be larger than previously determined, particularly in arid areas where food resources may be low. The International Union for the Conservation of Nature lists aardvarks in the category of “least concern,” in part due to the broad range of ecosystems they inhabit. However, little is known about current population trends or their actual distribution across the landscape.

However, if food supplies become scarce, aardvarks will sometimes eat fruit, such as the aardvark cucumber, and soft-bodied insects to supplement their diets. It is 60 centimetres (24 in) tall at the shoulder, and has a girth of about 100 centimetres (3.3 ft).[22] It is the largest member of the proposed clade Afroinsectiphilia. The aardvark is pale yellowish-grey in colour and often stained reddish-brown by soil.

The Oregon State researchers believe the species is understudied because they are nocturnal, hard to trap and exist in low densities across large and often remote landscapes. Though aardvarks remain widespread, humans are the aardvark’s biggest Diet of specific animals threat. Some landowners don’t like the holes that aardvarks leave behind and kill the aardvarks. The use of pesticides to grow crops on land inhabited by aardvarks has also reduced the number of insects available for aardvarks to eat.

This mixture provides the aardvark with all the nutrients they need and are a good substitute for their natural diet. All of these adaptations work together to make aardvarks highly specialized – and effective predators of insects that live in the soil. In South Africa, the genetic information they gathered suggested three regional divisions of aardvarks, indicating that animals in western, central and eastern regions of South Africa were somewhat isolated from each other.