AARDVARKS

On Friday Mom went to an estate sale, and she bought an aardvark.  She thought at first that she was buying an armadillo, but the more she looked at it, the more she decided it was an aardvark instead of an armadillo.  And one reason she thought this was because the animal was carved out of that soapstone stuff that people in Africa make carvings out of to sell to tourists.  There was a zebra at the sale, too, carved out of the same kind of stone, but Mom did not buy it.  She only bought the aardvark.

Mom's aardvark

Well, when I saw Mom's aardvark, I became inspired to write about aardvarks in my blog, so I did some research and I learned that aardvarks live in most parts of Africa, except not in the Sahara Desert.  There are lots of them, so they are not in any danger of going extinct.

The scientific name for aardvarks is Orycteropus afer, which is Greek for "digging-footed from Africa."  The name aardvark is an early Afrikaans word, and it means "earth pig" or "ground pig."  The animals were called this because they live in burrows in the ground, and also they look a little like pigs, even though they are not even remotely related to pigs.

Other names for aardvarks are "antbear" or "anteater," but aardvarks aren't related to the South American anteater either.  In fact, aardvarks don't have any close relatives at all, so that may be why they don't have family reunions.  Their closest relatives are elephant shrews, sirenians, hyraxes, tenrecs, and elephants.

Aardvarks have tough skin with some coarse hair on it.  Their toes have wide, flat nails that are really good for digging.  Their long snouts have a flat sort of disc at the end where the nostrils are.  The aardvark's mouth is shaped like a tube, and its tongue is like a long, sticky worm that can be 12 inches long.

The whole reason aardvarks are made like this is so they can dig termites out of their mounds and eat them.  Termites and ants are almost the only things that aardvarks eat, which frankly, does not sound like a very yummy or well-balanced diet to me.  But aardvarks seem to do fine on it.  Adults weigh between 110 and 180 pounds, and they live as long as 23 years in captivity.

Termite mounds can be really tall!

In Africa, where the aardvarks live, it gets very hot, so during the day they stay in their burrows where it is cooler.  Then at night they come out and look for termites.  Aardvarks don't have very good eyesight, but they can hear really well, so they are always listening for predators.  Also they have a great sense of smell, and they can sniff out termite mounds or ant colonies.  During the night, aardvarks usually go an average of 1 to 3 miles while hunting, but sometimes they go as far as 18 miles in one night.

This mound got dug into, probably by an aardvark.

When an aardvark finds a termite mound, it digs in very quickly and starts snarfing up the termites.  The aardvark can close its nostrils to keep dust out of its nose, and its thick skin protects it from insect bites.  Aardvarks can dig 2 feet deep in only 15 seconds, even though they move much more slowly when they are just walking around.  During one night, an aardvark can eat as many as 50,000 termites or ants.

Real aardvark burrows have much smaller openings.
This one is probably in a zoo.

Besides eating termites, digging burrows is something that aardvarks also do a lot of.  They usually have a main burrow, which is big and has lots of escape routes.  And then they may have several smaller burrows where they can just hang out during the day.  When they are sleeping in their burrow, they close up the entrance with dirt, so it doesn't even look like there is a burrow there.  Abandoned burrows are used by smaller animals such as the African wild dog.

Aardvarks live by themselves unless it is mating season.  After mating, a female aardvark waits 7 months and then one cub is born that weighs about 4 pounds.  After 2 weeks, the cub can leave the burrow and follow the mother.  By 14 weeks, it is eating termites, and it is weaned by 16 weeks.  At 6 months, a cub can dig its own burrow, but often a cub will stay with its mom until the next mating season.

The main predators of aardvarks are lions, leopards, hunting dogs, and pythons.  Also there are some African tribes that hunt aardvarks for their meat.  If an aardvark is trying to get away from a predator, it can dig a burrow really fast, or else it can run in a zig-zag way.  Sometimes it will use its claws, tail, and shoulders to defend itself, and its thick skin also helps protect it.

In African folklore, the aardvark is admired because of how hard it works to find food, and also because it is not afraid of soldier ants.  Some African magicians make a charm out of parts of the aardvark, mixed with the root of a certain tree.  A person who has this charm is supposed to be able to go through walls or roofs at night.  Burglars like to use this charm, and so do young men who want to visit girls without the permission of the girls' parents.

I think aardvarks are funny-looking, and it might be interesting to have one at our house, but Mom says we do not have enough termites to feed an aardvark, or at least she hopes we don't!