Aardvark Animal Facts & Information

Aardvarks live all through Africa, south of the Sahara. Interesting Aardvark Facts, Aardvark History, Aardvark Habitat, Diet, Prey, Behavior and Lifestyle in This Page.

Quick Facts

Common Name	Aardvark
Scientific Name	Orycteropus afer
Group	Mammal
Location	Sub-Saharan Africa
Habitat	Sandy and clay soil
Colour	Brown, grey, yellow
Size (L)	1.05m - 2.20m (3.4ft - 7.3ft)
Weight	60kg - 80kg (130lbs - 180lbs)
Top Speed	40kph (25mph)
Diet	Omnivore
Prey	Termites, Ants
Predators	Lions, Leopards, Hyenas
Lifestyle	Nocturnal
Lifespan	23 years
Age of Sexual Maturity	2 years

Aardvarks History

Aardvarks live all through Africa, south of the Sahara. Their name originates from South Africa's Afrikaans language and recommends that "earth pig." A brief look at the aardvark's body and long nose carries the pig to mind.

After looking into it further, the aardvark seems to join other creature includes additionally . It gloats rabbitlike ears and a kangaroo tail—yet the aardvark is said to none of those creatures. Aardvarks are nighttime.

They go through the blistering African evening squatted in cool underground tunnels burrowed with their amazing feet and paws that take after little spades. After dusk, aardvarks set out to really utilize those hooks in gaining their preferred nourishment—termites.

While rummaging in fields and woodlands aardvarks, additionally called "antbears," may travel a few miles per night looking for huge, earthen termite hills. An eager aardvark burrows through the hard shell of a promising hill with its front paws and uses its long, clingy, wormlike tongue to devour the creepy crawlies inside. It can close its noses to remain residue and bugs from attacking its nose, and its skin shields it from nibbles. It utilizes an indistinguishable system to assault underground insect homes.

Female aardvarks commonly bring forth in any event one infant every year . The youthful remain with their mom for concerning a half year before moving out and burrow their own tunnels, which can be concentrated homes with numerous elective openings.

Aardvark Distribution and Habitat

Aardvarks are found in a wide range of habitats all through sub-Saharan Africa from dry deserts to the wet rainforest locales. The main specification (other than having great access to a lot of nourishment and water) is to have acceptable soil in which they can burrow their broad tunnels. In spite of being exceptionally talented at delving in sandy or mud soil types, rockier locales demonstrate all the more a test to make their underground homes so the aardvark will move to another territory where soil conditions are more qualified to burrowing.

Their tunnels can be up to 10 meters (33 ft) long in a home range that can be somewhere in the range of 2 to 5 kilometers square. Their tunnels regularly having various passages and are constantly left head first so they can distinguish potential predators effectively utilizing their sharp feeling of smell.

Aardvark Behavior and Lifestyle

Aardvarks are for the most part singular creatures that meet up just to mate and are never found in huge gatherings. They live in underground tunnels to shield them both from the sweltering daytime sun and from predators. Aardvarks are nighttime well evolved creatures, just leaving the wellbeing of the tunnel under the front of night when they go looking for nourishment and water, regularly voyaging a few miles so as to locate the greatest termite hills guided by their phenomenal hearing and feeling of smell.

Regardless of regularly having an enormous tunnel included a broad system of passages, aardvarks are likewise known to have the option to rapidly unearth little brief tunnels where they can ensure themselves rapidly as opposed to coming back to their unique dwelling.

Aardvark Diet and Prey

The diet of aardvarks is essentially included ants and termites, with termites being their favored nourishment source. In spite of this however, they are known to likewise eat different creepy crawlies, for example, bugs and bug hatchlings. Aardvarks are worked to be insectivores, with solid appendages and paws that are equipped for breaking into the harder external shell of termite hills effectively.

When they have broken into the hill they at that point utilize their long, clingy tongue to reap the bugs inside and eat them entire without biting as they are then ground down in their solid stomachs. One of the aardvarks most unmistakable highlights is the way that they have columnar cheek-teeth that fill no utilitarian need by any means.

With some bigger insect species that should be bitten they utilize the incisors that are situated towards the rear of their mouths. Aardvarks are additionally ready to utilize similar strategies to break into underground subterranean insect homes.

Interesting Aardvark Facts:

Aardvark arrives at 43 to 53 creeps long (from head to tail) and weigh of 110 to 180 pounds. Tail arrives at 21 to 23 crawls long.

Aardvark is nighttime (dynamic during the night) and singular creature (live all alone) which assembles with different aardvarks just during mating season.

Aardvark burrows shallow underground tunnels (10 feet in length) that are utilized as transitory safe houses from predators during the night when it scans for nourishment.

Transitory tunnels will be surrendered when aardvark leaves the domain where it was scanning for the nourishment. At the point when aardvarks leave the tunnels, they will be possessed by different creatures, for example, pythons, porcupines or winged animals.

Another kind of tunnels (that can reach up to 40 feet long) is utilized as perpetual residency and a spot where aardvarks mate and deal with the youthful.

Aardvark is known as an omnivore (creature that eats both meat and plants). It is specific for eating various kinds of termites and ants. Aardvark will eat plants just when its essential wellspring of nourishment is missing. For the situation it can't discover hills and ant colonies, aardvark will look and eat wild melons and creepy crawlies with delicate bodies.

Aardvark has brilliant feeling of smell, utilized for finding of the nourishment. It additionally has extraordinary feeling of hearing, which assists aardvark with identifying and avoid the predators on schedule.

Much the same as insect eating animal, aardvark has 1 ½ foot long, clingy tongue utilized for getting of ants and termites. While concentrated on the hill, aardvark will turn its ears in reverse to follow the hints of potential predators drawing nearer from its back.

Aardvark can eat up to 50 000 termites for each night.

Skin of the aardvark body is thick and extreme. It gives assurance against chomps of irate ants and termites. While eating, aardvark can close its noses to keep residue and creepy crawlies from entering the nose.

Aardvark can go somewhere in the range of 16 and 30 kilometers for each night while looking for the nourishment.

Primary predators of aardvarks are lions, cheetahs, wild pooches, pythons, panthers and people. In spite of the fact that aardvark resembles a powerless creature, it can guard itself when assaulted utilizing its sharp paws and solid feet. Aardvark's paws are solid as a pickaxe. At the point when upset, aardvark screeches like a pig.

Aardvark is amazing swimmer because of its webbed feet.

Since aardvark is a modest, nighttime creature, very little is thought about its conceptive conduct. Pregnancy keeps going 7 months and female brings forth one child, as a rule among October and November. Infant remains with its mom a half year, after which it starts a lone life.