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Discover Fascinating Aardvark Animal Facts: Your Ultimate Guide!

COMMON NAME: 
Aardvarks
SCIENTIFIC NAME: 
Orycteropus afer
TYPE: 
Mammals
DIET: 
Insectivore
AVERAGE LIFE SPAN IN CAPTIVITY: 
23 years
SIZE: 
Head and body: 43 to 53 inches; tail: 21 to 26 inches
      WEIGHT: 
110 to 180 pounds

                   

                                                      Who is he aardvark?

• As burrowing mammals with porcine snouts, aardvarks are true to their call, which translates to “earth pig” within the Afrikaans.
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• The nocturnal animals use their lengthy noses and eager experience of scent to smell out ants and termites, which they lap up with an anteater-like tongue protected in sticky saliva. These insects make up the maximum of the aardvark’s food plan, even thoconsuming beetle larvae and then consume bks use their long, powerful claws to tear open termite mounds, as well as dig underground burrows wherein they sleep and take care of their younger.
• Once abandoned, these well-built burrows, which can have many entrances, are recycled through different animals, along with reptiles, amphibians, mammals, and birds. Porcupines and hyenas may also adjust the burrows for his or her use, as example through increasing the entrance. (Related: Why some animals are greater important to ecosystems than others.)
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• Aardvarks have stocky bodies, pinkish-gray or grayish-brown pores and skin, and a short tail. To thrive of their sub-Saharan habitat, the insectivores game massive, rabbity ears that disperse warmness, sparse body hair, and thick pores and skin that’s impervious to insect bites.
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• People hardly ever see aardvarks, broadly speaking due to the fact they’re solitary, nocturnal, and spend a lot time underground. They also lack the reflective tissue that makes the eyes of a few animals glow inside the dark.

Reproduction

• Because of the aardvark’s elusive nature, little is known approximately its mating habits inside the wild.
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• Males and girls come collectively in brief to mate. Gestation lasts eight months, after which a woman births a unmarried cub. The child, hairless and approximately six pounds, is born at some point of a peak time of food availability—both before or for the duration of the rainy season.
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• The mother remains in the burrow along with her offspring for two weeks, at which period the infant can accompany her on foraging trips out of doors the burrow. Young aardvarks can eat stable meals at three months, and are completely weaned and on their personal at six or seven months.

Take care and shield it

The International Union for the Conservation of Species considers the aardvark a species of “least situation,” which means their populations are stable. The species has robust numbers in included regions, including South Africa’s Kruger National Park.

Aardvarks do face threats, however, inclusive of habitat loss from agricultural improvement and a decline in insect prey due to insecticides.

In Zambia and Mozambique, the bushmeat trade is a risk to aardvarks, in line with the IUCN. Some also are poached for their tooth, which might be believed to save you contamination and are worn as properly good fortune charms by using a few tribes.

Aardvarks will also be at risk of drought, one of the effects of climate alternate in Africa. In 2013, hot, dry situations in South Africa’s Tswalu Kalahari Reserve killed off some of the aardvarks’ insect prey. Unable to regulate their metabolism, several aardvarks died.

aardvark photos