4 §o 
CARNIVORES. 
may also be some dark bars on the limbs. The long tail is thickly haired. The 
long hair on the back forms a kind of crest (giving origin to the second scientific 
name of the aard-wolf), which can be erected at the will of the animal. The claws, 
like those of the hyaenas, are not capable of retraction, and are rather long, with 
blunted extremities. Whereas, however, the hyaenas have but four toes on both 
the front and hind-feet, the aard-wolf has live toes on the front, and four on the 
hind-feet. But the most peculiar feature is to be found in the almost rudimental 
condition of the teeth, which may be either thirty or thirty-two in number, their 
small size being most apparent in those of the cheek series, which are widely 
THE AARD-WOLF (j Rat. size). 
separated from one another, and are quite unlike the strongly-developed teeth 
of the hyaenas. The skull, while agreeing in many respects with that of the 
hyaenas, has also certain points of resemblance with that of the mungooses. The 
aard-wolf may, in short, be regarded as an animal which, in all probability, 
originated from the same ancestral civet-like creatures from which the hyaenas were 
derived, but which has undergone a kind of retrograde development to suit the 
needs of a particular mode of life. It was long thought to be confined to South 
Africa, but it has been subsequently found to range on the West Coast as far north 
as Angola, and quite recently a single skin has been obtained from Somaliland, so 
that it probably extends right across the Continent. 
