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Aardwolf — printable fact sheet
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Aardwolf
Proteles cristata
The aardwolf is a hyena that gave up being a hyena. It looks like a small striped hyena and it is one, but where its relatives evolved bone-crushing jaws, the aardwolf abandoned the entire carnivore project and went after termites. It eats almost nothing else — as many as a quar…
Did you know?
- Despite belonging to the hyena family, the aardwolf’s main food source is termites, not meat.
- It is a hyena that eats termites — as many as a quarter of a million in one night, lapped up with a sticky tongue. Its cheek teeth have degenerated into useless pegs; only the canines remain, and those are for fighting, not eating. It specialises on a termite that defends itself with a chemical almost every other predator refuses. It takes them from the surface rather than digging into the mound.
What I learned
Draw the aardwolf
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