The Solitude of the Aardvark
I have always found the aardvark to be a unique and fascinating creature. Known as the ant bear, it is the picture of solitude — not only because it is a lone creature that is rarely seen with its kind, but because from an evolutionary standpoint, they are literally in a class by themselves. Below is a quick vignette, followed by some information on its biology.
An Aardvark’s Midnight Journey
Four hours after sunset, in a patch of dry savanna in Sub-Saharan Africa, an aardvark emerges from the south entrance of its burrow.
It turns and looks back at it with pride. This subterranean network of chambers is its own handiwork. It has sculpted the interior with its powerful claws, and has carved out a new chamber in the past month.
The aardvark leaves its abode and roams the plains of the savanna looking for termites and ants. But it is not the only one looking for food. Its rabbit-like ears pick up a rustling in the nearby overgrown vegetation to the west. Remembering this sound from a lion that it had narrowly escaped, it turns and heads east.
As our lone mammal travels across the dry expanse, it swings its snout from side to side, hoping to detect the scent of termites or ants. After a half-hour of searching, it picks up a scent and soon finds a termite mound protruding up from the ground. It digs into the ground to unearth their stronghold. Once it spots the little bugs, it extends its12-inch-long tongue. Within seconds, it is slurping up hundreds of termites.
Nourished but not yet satisfied, the ant bear soon leaves the mound and moves on in search of other food sources. It finds another mound across from a large patch of overgrown shrubs and tall grass. Nearby it hears a rustling sound, this time closer than earlier. Glancing behind, it spots movement in the tall grass and turns to face it.
In the dim moonlight, our traveler sees more rustling — perhaps a tail, though with its poor eyesight, it has trouble making it out. Suspecting a threat, it turns around and moves away from the grass, intending to try another area. The foraging will have to wait.
Within seconds, a hyena emerges from the tall grass. The aardvark turns and breaks into a brisk trot. The predator begins to approach, its head confidently bobbing up and down. As the aardvark picks up the pace, the hyena accelerates as well. Both are now racing over the grassland at around twenty miles an hour, and the hyena is gaining.
The aardvark runs into a wooded area, moving in a zig-zag fashion and around trees to avoid its aggressor. As it negotiates the surroundings, it collides with an old acacia tree, causing a large branch to fall to the ground behind it. The hyena leaps over the fallen branch and keeps racing towards its target. The aardvark moves left, then darts right. Confused, the hyena collides with a thorn bush. It rises growling and resumes its pursuit.
Our plucky insectivore gains a little ground and finds that the forest opens up into a large glade in a wooded area. It recognizes this place and starts to amble towards a sunken patch of dirt near the center of the glade.
It is barely able to catch its breath when the hyena emerges from the trees. The hungry creature plows into the glade, leaving a thick trail of dust behind it, and rushes at the aardvark, tackling it to the ground. The two wrestle for several seconds, causing a thick cloud of dust to swirl around them. The hyena tries to trap the aardvark with its hind legs and left foreleg, pressing it next to the sunken indentation it was looking at. The hyena opens its mouth and swipes at the aardvark with its right claw.
Before the aggressor can make contact, the gritty ant bear squirms out of its grip and quickly digs at the sunken patch of dirt, revealing it to be a large hole in the ground. It escapes into the hole head-first. As the cloud of dust settles, the hyena looks down the hole for a few seconds and then looks up, dismayed and dejected.
The aardvark is now in its old burrow from the year before. It wanders through its tunnels and sees that many chambers are occupied. In this chamber is a warthog asleep. Resting in the next chamber is a wild dog. And creeping quietly in a dusty corner is a lizard.
The insectivore finds an empty chamber in the fast network of tunnels and takes a nap, biding its time until it thinks the hyena has moved on. The earlier meal had felt like just an appetizer, but it knows it will be resuming the bug hunt soon.
Biology
Below is some information on the adaptations, lifestyle, habitat, and the evolutionary history of the aardvark.
Adaptations
The aardvark, also known as Orycteropus Afer, has many adaptations. It has sharp claws and powerful front legs, which it uses for burrowing. It has a thick hide, which helps to protect it against the bites of the insects it feeds upon. Its long snout is well-suited to eating ants and termites. And its sticky tongue can be as long as twelve inches, which allows it to reach into holes and capture its prey.
Lifestyle
The aardvark is nocturnal and can eat as many as 50,000 insects in a night. It is also solitary, and two aardvarks will only come together for mating.
Habitat
An aardvark resides within the burrows that it creates with its digging. Some of these burrows end up being vast networks of tunnels. Aardvarks may leave old burrows and move elsewhere to create new ones — and the burrows it abandons may end up as homes or resting places for other animals, including snakes, lizards, wild dogs, and warthogs.
Taxonomy
The aardvark is the only living member of its family Oryctopodidae. Fossil clues suggest that there are 14 different species in the aardvark family that all went extinct. It is also the only extant member of its mammalian order Tubulidentata, which means tubule-toothed. Its closest relative, Leptorycteropus, has been extinct since the late Pleistocene age.
A mysterious past
The aardvark has been somewhat of an evolutionary puzzle, in large part because of its unique appearance and lack of close living relatives. In earlier times, scientists thought that the aardvark was closely related to the anteater. This was back when all we had to go on were physical characteristics, eating habits, and morphology. Like the anteater, the aardvark is a mammal, has a long snout, and consumes insects. That said, the two exist on different contents—while the aardvark lives in Africa, the anteater takes up residence in South and Central America.
Alpha Crystallin
The notion of the aardvark’s relatedness to the anteater was soundly refuted by molecular studies, which allowed scientists to get a close-up look at protein molecules — chains of amino acids constructed based on the instructions within DNA. And particular protein sequences can be compared across species. One of these proteins was an eye lens protein, α-crystallin A. Differences in the amino acid sequences of this protein revealed that the aardvark was most similar to the manatee, hyrax, and elephant — but was found to be quite unrelated to the anteater.
While the aardvark has been an evolutionary enigma for quite some time, its phylogenetic relationships have become somewhat clearer with advances in molecular genetics. Its adaptations enable it to survive the deserts and savannas of Sub-Saharan Africa. Because it creates living spaces for other members of its community, it is considered a keystone species. I have long found the aardvark to be a fascinating, lovable oddity.
Thanks for reading!
References
OneKindPlanet Staff. Amazing Facts About Aardvarks. onekindplanet.org.
Erin Zimmerman. February 6, 2013. The Life And Times of the Last Earthpig. Questionable Evolution.
Claudia Grey. March 23, 2012. Aardvarks: The Most Evolutionarily Distinct Mammals. The Edge of Existence Programme Blog.
Thomas Lehmann. Phylogeny and systematics of the Orycteropodidae (Mammalia, Tubulidentata). Zoological Journal of the Linnaean Society. Oxford Academic Journals.
