The aardvark is a strange-looking creature – to us, that is, no doubt it looks perfectly normal to other aardvarks. The name is Afrikaans for “earth pig”, but it is certainly not a pig despite some superficial resemblances. It does, however, do a lot of rooting about in soil and termite mounds for its food, which consists of ants and termites.
One of the more remarkable things about the aardvark is that it is a “living fossil”. When its mitochondrial DNA was sequenced in 1999 it was discovered that the aardvark could be the closest living relation to the first placental mammals that walked on planet Earth some 100 million years ago. It appears that its DNA has undergone hardly any change during that time. This posits the idea that the earliest placental mammals (i.e. not marsupials or monotremes) may have looked something like modern aardvarks, but we cannot be certain of that.
Another finding that came from the DNA analysis was that the aardvark is more closely related to the elephant than to the anteaters of South America, despite occupying a similar ecological niche to the latter.
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Question of
Have you ever seen an aardvark in the wild?
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Yes
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No
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Question of
Have you seen one in a zoo?
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Yes
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No
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Question of
Did you know about the “living fossil” claim?
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Yes
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I have heard of this word but never seen the living creature and for me it is a first… Thanks Indexer
It’s just about the first word in most dictionaries!
As we all know, these animals are not dangerous – as some wise person said: “aardvark never did anyone any harm”.
I have heard of this word but never seen the living creature and for me it is a first… Thanks
Interesting information about the aardvark, I have seen them in zoos,
I wonder where the aardvark gets so many ants to eat.
Have you ever seen a large anthill or termite mound? I don’t reckon that the species will go extinct just yet due to running out of ants!
Amazing fact about this little animal being related to the elephant.
No never seen this one ….
I have never seen this animal. I think it is cute! It has rabbit ears and a pig’s nose.?