Aardvark

Fascinating facts about the Aardvark

• Aardvarks chew nothing; their teeth are tiny, enamel-free pegs that grow back forever. The largest tooth columns contain about 1,500 hexagonal tubes, a design. This endless renewal lets them grind ants each night without wearing down, a dental trick that lets a 60-kg animal survive on a single food type.
• A single aardvark burrow can stretch up to 13 metres (43 ft) and have several entrances, big enough for a person to walk through. When the animal abandons a tunnel, other species, wild dogs, warthogs, hares, mongooses, owls and more, move in, turning the old hole into a community shelter that buffers wildlife against fires.
• At night an aardvark roams a home range of 10 to 30 kilometres (6.2 to 18.6 mi), zig-zagging to avoid over-harvesting any single termite mound. Studies show they usually cover 2 to 5 km per outing, but some individuals have been recorded traveling as far as 30 km (19 mi) in a single night.
• Aardvark mothers carry a single cub for seven months, then give birth to a newborn weighing 1.7-1.9 kg (3.7-4.2 lb) between May and July. The baby stays in the burrow for two weeks, starts nibbling termites at nine weeks, and is fully weaned by three to four months, reaching independence at six months, just in time to dig its own tunnel before the next breeding season.
• Fossils show aardvarks have been around for at least 5 million years, with remains found across Europe and the Near East. The earliest clear tubulidentate, Myorycteropus africanus, lived in the Kenyan Miocene, and the first Orycteropus species appears in middle-Miocene deposits.

Sources

Every fact above was checked against these pages, and kept only where one of them states it.

• Wikipedia

At a glance

About the Aardvark

In the velvety blackness of the African night, the aardvark emerges, its long, pointed snout twitching as it roots out the termite mounds that sustain it, its powerful claws and agile limbs allowing it to move with a silent, ghostly ease. As it digs and snuffles, its large, flapping ears and tubular snout give it a curiously endearing, almost comical appearance, yet its nocturnal wanderings are a testament to its remarkable adaptability and resilience. With its unique, anteater-like visage and deliberate, burrowing gait, the aardvark is a creature of quiet fascination, a true original of the savannah's secret hours.

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