With the sighting on Argyle Road in July, we want to honour the elusive aardvark (Orycteropus afer) as our species of the month.
Aardvarks are large nocturnal mammals, greyish-pink in colour, with large ears, an elongated snout and a long tail. Surprisingly, an aardvark can reach up to 80kg and 1.5-2m in length (including the tail) - a lot bigger than most people would think. They’re also much faster than you’d think, reaching top speeds of around 25hm/h, and have a lifespan of around 18 years.
As burrowing mammals, the aardvark is known to have multiple burrows, some more than 10m deep, within a home range. The burrows tend to have multiple chambers and entrances and can be quite intricate. Unlike other animals, aardvarks dig these burrows themselves, and can dig over 1m down into the soil in under 5 minutes. With a diet of mostly termites and ants, this mammal, when seen, is often digging to find food or shelter.
This highly secretive burrowing mammal is an absolute prize to see on any bush adventure anywhere in sub-Saharan Africa. Very few people can boast of having spotted this animal in the wild - have you? Sightings of this mammal are rare, although reported sightings in the Umbabat have increased over the last 3 months. Interestingly, most people who report having seen an aardvark have seen it either hanging in a tree, hoisted by a leopard, or sadly next to road verges, having been killed by passing traffic. For most, this is as close as they’ll get to a sighting of a wild aardvark.
Did you know?
Thanks to the extremely elusive behaviour of the aardvark, almost nothing is known about the population estimates of the species across sub-Saharan Africa. Thanks to sightings being so few and far between, nobody has ever been able to adequately estimate what the populations in the wild are. Aardvarks are also considered to be of vital importance to other animals in the bush - their burrows create safe spaces for everything from hyena cubs and porcupines to birds and bats!
Words by Tess Woollgar, image courtesy of Thomas Retterrath via Canva