Animal · South Africa, Botswana, Namibia
Aardvark
Orycteropus afer — the name this animal has in the language scientists everywhere share.
The aardvark digs its way through the African night with spade-shaped claws, opening termite mounds that are nearly as hard as stone. Its name is Afrikaans for earth pig, but it is no relative of pigs at all. Its closest living relatives are elephants and hyraxes.
Picture credit: Burgers' Zoo (CC BY-SA 4.0) · NasserHalaweh (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Wikimedia Commons
Where does the aardvark live?
Home: savanna, bush and grassland south of the Sahara.
In the wild it lives in these countries: South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Tanzania, Kenya, Ethiopia.
Conservation status from the IUCN: not in danger.
The short profile
Fully grown: about 1.2 m long plus a 60 cm tail. It weighs about 60 kilograms. On the menu: insects.
The story behind it
An aardvark sleeps underground all day and comes out after sunset to walk two to five kilometres in search of ants and termites. It works by smell and hearing, with a nose that holds more scent sensors than almost any other mammal and ears up to 25 centimetres long that fold shut when soil starts flying. Once a mound is broken open, a sticky tongue about 30 centimetres long sweeps the insects up, and a single animal can swallow tens of thousands in one night. Its back teeth have no hard enamel and simply keep growing as they wear down. Digging is its great skill: it can cut about a metre of fresh tunnel in five minutes. Old aardvark burrows become homes for warthogs, porcupines, mongooses and owls, so a whole neighbourhood depends on one digger. It looks and eats much like a South American anteater, yet the two are not related at all; they simply grew the same tools for the same job.
Find it on the globe
Aardvark is there as a tiny animated figure that breathes and looks around. From far away the planet is only a blue ball; detail arrives as you zoom in, and this one appears once you are close enough. Open it on the globe.
It sits at its real coordinates, not near them — the same numbers listed in the facts above. Switch off the layer for this kind of place and it disappears again; the buttons for that are down the right-hand edge.
Questions children ask
How does it avoid being bitten?
Thick skin, stiff bristles around the nostrils and a nose it can close keep the soldier insects out. If the biting gets bad, the aardvark simply moves round to another part of the mound.
What is an aardvark cucumber?
It is a wild plant whose fruit ripens underground. The aardvark digs it up for the water inside, then leaves the seeds in its droppings near a fresh burrow, so plant and animal need each other.
Why does hardly anyone see one?
Aardvarks come out only at night, live alone and slip into a burrow at the first hint of danger. Researchers often count fresh diggings and tracks instead of counting the animals themselves.
Where these numbers come from
Every figure on this page was checked against public reference sources before publication. Where sources genuinely disagree, the text says so.
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