Aardwolf

The Aardwolf is a very small animal that is reminiscent of the Hyena, but eats insects and flying bugs.

Its name means earth wolf in the Afrikaans language and it is also known as a maanhar jackal.

It is a very defenseless animal and eats mostly termites and other insets as well as carrion animals.

Aardwolf

The aardwolf is the only survivor of what was an entire family of animals.

The aardwolf looks a great deal like a Hyena but is greatly reduced in size and has a more pointy nose and muzzle area.

It has a very unique mane down the middle of its neck and black stripes on a yellow colored fur.

The aardwolf is actually fairly tiny in comparison to his other family members, standing just about 50 cm at the shoulder and weighing in at only about 25 pounds.

Its teeth and head are very similar to the hyena, although the teeth and tongue are geared toward eating insects.

As the aardwolf gets older it begins to lose teeth however because it eats softer things such as ants, it rarely impacts their ability to feed.

The aardwolf possesses two glands at the rear that make musk with which they will mark their territory and use to communicate with other aardwolves.

He lives in open areas, dry plains and bush and tends to avoid high altitudes such as mountainous regions.

He is very often found ranging where there are larger termite hills in place as this keeps him closer to his food source.

Two areas are home to the aardwolf. One being Southern Africa and another at North Eastern Africa.

Aardwolves are shy are also nocturnal. They sleep in burrows they dig under the earth by day and hunt insects at night.

By night, an aardwolf can eat as many as two hundred thousand ants or termites which it licks up using its sticky, long tongue.

The aardwolf is very careful to be certain he does not eat the whole colony but rather will let the mound stay in place and leave the termites to provide for future meals.

They will return to the nest repeatedly over time, and can memorize where the nests are.

Once in a while they will feed on small birds and lizards as well as termites.

Aardwolves have from one to five little ones, which are called cubs after a gestation of about 100 days.

Baby Aardwolfs

They spend about eight weeks in the den and will then go out with mother to hunt termites.

After three months, they begin supervised foraging and by four months are normally independent.

Aardwolves can live up to about fifteen years.

Find out more about the Aardwolf over at Wikipedia »