A BURROWING EDENTATE 



THE AARD VARK 



A sight of this undoubtedly one of the strangest of 

 the mammalia will convince the observer of the justice 

 of the Dutch name for it, viz. the " earth hog." It is 

 also distinctly like the figure of the Devil in Albert 

 Diirer's picture of Sintram. The piggish appearance 

 is mainly due to the soft snout broadened and flattened 

 at the end with the nostrils on the flattened region. 

 The long ears, the " piggisneyes " and the somewhat 

 sparse covering of hairs add to the likeness, and con- 

 tribute towards the building up of a beast that, if it 

 were figured as a " restoration " of some extinct form, 

 would cause jeers at the expense of the draughtsman. 

 Nature in fact in constructing the aard vark seems 

 at first sight to have blundered. That will not be the 

 view of anyone who has had the opportunity of watching 

 the aard vard on its native Karoo. It buries itself 

 in the earth with such rapidity, that it can only be 

 followed by digging ahead in the presumed direction 

 in which it is going. The Orycteropus is an under- 

 ground creature living in burrows of its own excavation, 

 which are thoughtfully and conveniently placed in the 

 neighbourhood of the tall hills erected by the white 

 ants upon which this ant-eater of the Cape preys. 

 The body is eminently suited for burrowing for it 

 dwindles at the two ends ; the tail is but little distinct 

 from the body, and has been correctly described as " a 

 tapering of the body to a point." The deficient hairy 

 covering is more than matched in another African and 

 burrowing creature, the little rodent Heterocephalus. 

 It appears that for burrowing animals the two ex- 

 tremes of hairiness are the most suitable. At one 

 extreme we have Heterocephalus and the armadillos, 

 and at the other the mole ; but in the latter beast the 

 fur is so dense and close that it presents an even surface 

 comparable to nakedness. The reason for the extreme 



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