Animalia > Chordata > Mammalia > Tubulidentata > Orycteropodidae > Orycteropus > Orycteropus afer

Orycteropus afer (Aardvark)

Synonyms:

Wikipedia Abstract

The aardvark (/ˈɑːrd.vɑːrk/ ARD-vark; Orycteropus afer) is a medium-sized, burrowing, nocturnal mammal native to Africa. It is the only living species of the order Tubulidentata, although other prehistoric species and genera of Tubulidentata are known. Unlike other insectivores, it has a long pig-like snout, which is used to sniff out food. It roams over most of the southern two-thirds of the African continent, avoiding areas that are mainly rocky. A nocturnal feeder, it subsists on ants and termites, which it will dig out of their hills using its sharp claws and powerful legs. It also digs to create burrows in which to live and rear its young. It receives a "least concern" rating from the IUCN, although its numbers seem to be decreasing.
View Wikipedia Record: Orycteropus afer

Infraspecies

Orycteropus afer adametzi
Orycteropus afer aethiopicus
Orycteropus afer afer (Aardvark)
Orycteropus afer angolensis
Orycteropus afer erikssoni
Orycteropus afer faradjius
Orycteropus afer haussanus
Orycteropus afer kordofanicus
Orycteropus afer lademanni (Aardvark)
Orycteropus afer leptodon
Orycteropus afer matschiei
Orycteropus afer observandus
Orycteropus afer ruvanensis
Orycteropus afer senegalensis
Orycteropus afer somalicus
Orycteropus afer wardi
Orycteropus afer wertheri

EDGE Analysis

Uniqueness Scale: Similiar (0) 
46
 Unique (100)
Uniqueness & Vulnerability Scale: Similiar & Secure (0) 
58
 Unique & Vulnerable (100)
ED Score: 89.41
EDGE Score: 4.5
View EDGE Record: Orycteropus afer

Attributes

Adult Weight [1]  132.278 lbs (60.00 kg)
Birth Weight [1]  3.968 lbs (1.80 kg)
Diet [2]  Carnivore (Invertebrates)
Diet - Invertibrates [2]  100 %
Forages - Ground [2]  100 %
Female Maturity [1]  2 years
Male Maturity [1]  2 years
Gestation [1]  7 months 15 days
Litter Size [1]  1
Litters / Year [1]  1
Maximum Longevity [1]  30 years
Snout to Vent Length [3]  4.658 feet (142 cm)
Weaning [1]  3 months 13 days

Ecoregions

Protected Areas

Biodiversity Hotspots

Prey / Diet

Prey / Diet Overlap

Predators

Consumers

Parasitized by 
Echidnophaga larina[6]
Hybophthirus notophallus[7]

Range Map

External References

Citations

Attributes / relations provided by
♦ 1de Magalhaes, J. P., and Costa, J. (2009) A database of vertebrate longevity records and their relation to other life-history traits. Journal of Evolutionary Biology 22(8):1770-1774
♦ 2Hamish Wilman, Jonathan Belmaker, Jennifer Simpson, Carolina de la Rosa, Marcelo M. Rivadeneira, and Walter Jetz. 2014. EltonTraits 1.0: Species-level foraging attributes of the world's birds and mammals. Ecology 95:2027
♦ 3Nathan P. Myhrvold, Elita Baldridge, Benjamin Chan, Dhileep Sivam, Daniel L. Freeman, and S. K. Morgan Ernest. 2015. An amniote life-history database to perform comparative analyses with birds, mammals, and reptiles. Ecology 96:3109
♦ 4THE FEEDING ECOLOGY AND HABITAT USE OF THE AARDVARK Orycteropus afer, Peter Andrew Lindsey, Masters Thesis, University of Pretoria, 1999
♦ 5Orycteropus afer, Jeheskel Shoshani, Corey A. Goldman, and J. G. M. Thewissen, MAMMALIAN SPECIES No. 300, pp. 1-8 (1988)
♦ 6International Flea Database
♦ 7Jorrit H. Poelen, James D. Simons and Chris J. Mungall. (2014). Global Biotic Interactions: An open infrastructure to share and analyze species-interaction datasets. Ecological Informatics.
Ecoregions provided by World Wide Fund For Nature (WWF). WildFinder: Online database of species distributions, ver. 01.06 Wildfinder Database
Biodiversity Hotspots provided by Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund
Abstract provided by DBpedia licensed under a Creative Commons License
Species taxanomy provided by GBIF Secretariat (2022). GBIF Backbone Taxonomy. Checklist dataset https://doi.org/10.15468/39omei accessed via GBIF.org on 2023-06-13; License: CC BY 4.0