The Three A's

I'm not going to be doing records for this particular post, but I'll continue that later. This post will be about a specific type of animal, three, that is, in which their names all start with the letter A and have related behaviors. These three animals are: the aardvark, the anteater, and the armadillo. First animal is.... the small but lovable aardvark! These animals are native to Africa dwelling in open woodlands and forest as well as wide plains. These are in the Orycteropodidae family and are in a different one than our other two A fellows. One thing a lot of these animals have in common is their diet. These eat termites and ants. Yum! The aardvark eats in style. As you can see in the picture, the aardvark has long flat claws that are sharp enough to break the dirt in termite mounds with. Did I mention that the aardvark has a 12 inch long tongue? Well, it does. Once the termites are out of the nest, ready to be eaten, the creature towering above them lick them up as if they are a popsicle lying on the ground. For those toughie bugs, they got flat, short, pillarlike teeth that only are in the back of its mouth.They gotta bite hard to wear them down, but they're a soft food lover and don't care for crunchy things, which explains why they have big teeth which are'nt covered in white enamel. These things are not too big since they only are 3-5 feet long, yet they can live long; a promising around 20 years. These mate of course, and usually have 1 or 2 young. Their gestation period is 7 months long. Another thing about when they dig is their nostril hairs on their long snouts filter the dust and small insects that are tossed into the air when aardvarks are digging. Ears can be closed as well. Now we are on to the anteater. These strange looking creatures live in tropical woodland and grassland in central and south America. Some smaller ones might find homes in trees. They are in the myrmecophagidae family and eat ants and termites, which explains the name. They have and incredible 2 feet long tongue with sticky saliva and spiny ridges to suck up these little insects. Once the ants are in their mouth, they grind them up with hard bumps in their mouth. To break open the the mounds that house the ants and termites, they break it open (like the aardvark) with their powerful claws and front legs. If a bully comes up to the anteater, it will either swipe at the enemy with its claws or run away with a funny looking gallop. they have long toes that in needs to keep in shape. To do this, it walks with its knuckles tucked inward so they don't scrape the ground. When trying to find some dinner, they use a great sense of smell to detect a treat. They will never actually destroy the nest, because if they don't have time to finish their meal they can get back to it later. They live up to 20 years and have only one baby. They are only 0,5 to 4 feet long. The armadillo has tough plated, scale like body covering that allows it to have a high defense against predators. I actually (for once) don't know to much about this animal. One thing about it is that it can curl up into a ball to protect the soft underside when a predator starts stabbingat it. These animals are mammals, but they tend to don't have much hair, with only exceptions like the hairy armadillo. That's basically all I know. So leave a comment on what is your fave out of these three and what you would like for me to write about next.

By Tessa Sagner