Welcome

Colch­ester Zoo’s group of aard­varks cel­e­brated another birth of a healthy off­spring on the 20^th March 2012! Female aard­vark, Oq, gave birth to her 7^th baby at around 11.30am on the 20^th March, with the baby a good healthy size and con­tin­u­ing to develop well along­side the care of mum and its keepers!

Oq and baby are cur­rently housed in the birthing bur­row whilst the baby grows strong. They will be able to return to the rest of the group within approx­i­mately a month, when the young­ster will be strong enough to sur­vive any bumps from the rest of the group who are noto­ri­ously clumsy. The birthing bur­row is off show, but vis­i­tors can see Oq and her baby via a closed cir­cuit tele­vi­sion link to a large screen in the main view­ing tun­nel of the zoo’s Aard­vark Burrow.

This lat­est birth con­tin­ues the group’s sta­tus as one of the most suc­cess­ful breed­ing groups in Europe and the only suc­cess­ful group to breed in the UK.

Video from Colch­ester Zoo’s pre­vi­ous birth of Aar­vark young in Feb­ru­ary 2012:

What’s an Aardvark?

The Aard­vark (Oryctero­pus afer), also known as an antbear, has the high­est score for being the most evo­lu­tion­ar­ily dis­tinc­tive (ED) using the EDGE sci­en­tific method. Species such as the aard­vark are much more dis­tinct than oth­ers because they rep­re­sent a larger amount of unique evo­lu­tion: they have few or no close rel­a­tives and have been evolv­ing inde­pen­dently for mil­lions of years. The aard­vark is the only liv­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tive of an entire order of ani­mals, the Tubu­li­den­tata. Its clos­est rel­a­tives in this order have been extinct since the late Pleis­tocene age (2 mil­lion to 10,000 years ago) and now aard­varks are the only remain­ing species.

The name aard­vark comes from the Afrikaan/​Dutch mean­ing “earth pig”, the like­ness par­tic­u­larly evi­dent in the nose and face. With a large, pow­er­ful body, they typ­i­cally weigh 50-​70kg, with males being slightly larger than females. Their thick skin offers great pro­tec­tion from insect bites and preda­tors. The aardvark’s ears are capa­ble of mov­ing inde­pen­dently of each other, and they have a long tongue which extends up to 300mm. Using their feet, equipped with strong blunt claws, they can dig three dif­fer­ent types of bur­row: shal­low holes when hunt­ing for food; tem­po­rary shel­ters; and large tun­nel sys­tems. The aard­vark is regarded as akey­stone species as the holes it digs are used by snakes, lizards, hye­nas and wild dogs. Aard­varks have poor eye­sight but they have acute hear­ing and a good sense of smell to find ants and ter­mites, which are scooped up with their sticky tongues.

They occur in a vari­ety of habi­tats includ­ing grassy plains, wood­land and savan­nah. They pre­fer sandy soils but they are most likely to be found in areas with lots of ants and ter­mites. This species is rarely seen because of their elu­sive behav­iour, and there­fore a pop­u­la­tion esti­mate is dif­fi­cult to assess. In south­ern Africa the pop­u­la­tion is believed to be sta­ble aside from nat­ural pop­u­la­tion cycles in response to changes in the environment.

Aard­varks are native to South­ern Egypt and South Africa liv­ing mainly in the sub-​Saharan areas. They occur in a vari­ety of habi­tats includ­ing grassy plains, wood­land and savan­nah. The Aard­vark prefers sandy soils but is most likely to be found in areas with lots of ants and ter­mites as its diet con­sists of ants, ter­mites, fruit and other insects.

Accord­ing to the IUCN Red List of Threat­ened Species Aard­varks cur­rent sta­tus in the wild is of least con­cern. Although the Aard­vark has no major threats, its minor threats include habi­tat loss due to changes in land use and inten­sive crop farm­ing, and hunt­ing for bush meat. Farm­ers have been known to cull indi­vid­u­als but there is proof that if aard­varks are removed this causes an increase in ter­mite dam­age to crops. Hausa tribe ‘magi­cians’ some­times make the skin of the aard­vark into bracelets, and charms are made from the heart, skin, fore­head, and nails of the aard­vark, which they then pro­ceed to pound together with the root of a cer­tain tree. Wrapped in a piece of skin and worn on the chest, this is said to give the owner the abil­ity to pass through walls or roofs at night.

The above news item is reprinted from mate­ri­als avail­able at web­site Colch­ester Zoo and EDGE. Orig­i­nal text may be edited for con­tent and length.

(Sources: EDGE blog, 23.03.2012; Colch­ester Zoo)