You may have heard of an anteater, and you may have heard of an aardvark. You may have even seen some at a zoo. But do you know how to tell them apart? Believe it or not, they are really two different kinds of animals. If you do not believe me, look them up in the animal encyclopedia. The animal that we are going to learn about for the letter “a” is going to be the aardvark, but first we must be able to tell an aardvark from an anteater. Sure, they both eat ants and termites, and they both live up to twenty years, but that is where the similarities end. Scientists have ways of classifying living things, including animals. First things can be classified into kingdoms. Animals are from kingdom Animalia. Then things are classified into phylum, then class, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Finally you get down into a classification, called family. Anteaters are in the family Myrmecophagidae (don’t worry if you can’t say that word, I can’t either). Aardvarks are in the family Orycteropodidae (don’t worry, these words shouldn’t be on your next spelling test – I hope). Are you starting to see the difference between these two confusing animals? If you still do not understand, here is another thing about them that shows the difference. You might find an anteater in South America, but aardvarks belong in Africa.
Now that you can tell the difference between the two, let us focus on the aardvark. The aardvark can be between three and five feet long. They are very good diggers, and they can hide from predators by digging really fast, and disappearing below the horizon. An aardvark’s teeth keep growing, like a beaver’s. I am not very exhilarated about the thought of going to an aardvark restuarant, because all that would be served are ant and termites, the diet of an aardvark. Yuck!
