Baby aardvark doesn’t want to get weighed

January 19, 2018 • 1:30 pm

I’m tired today (the Laland post took a lot of work), and so all you’re gonna get for the rest of today are cute animals.

Winsol is a three-week baby aardvark (Orycteropus afer) who lives at the Cincinnati Zoo, and as you see from this video, he doesn’t want his vitals taken.  Winsol will get some hair later, but aardvarks (rare to see in zoos) never get hairy.

Fun aardvark fact:  This species is the only living member of the mammalian order Tubulidentata.

Fun fact #2: Aardvarks are native to sub-Saharan Africa.

Fun fact #3:  Aardvarks eat only ants and termites, yet they have teeth, and those teeth grow continuously.

26 thoughts on “Baby aardvark doesn’t want to get weighed”

  3. Weighing the Aardvark is kind of like getting something done in Washington DC. Just a few more hours before shutdown. So if you work for the govt. and needed some time off, happy days.

    1. I feel sorry for all those people who planned to visit National parks ,only to find them closed .

      Very strange for a Brit to get his head around ,the govt shutting down .

      1. I thought I heard they were not going to shut down this time. Not sure how they do that. Trump would just as well like to sell them off to oil and mining companies anyway.

    2. From Wikipedia:

      The name “aardvark” (Afrikaans pronunciation: [ˈɑːrtfark]) comes from earlier Afrikaans (erdvark) and means “earth pig” or “ground pig” (aarde: earth/ground, vark: pig), because of its burrowing habits (similar origin to the name groundhog).

      1. There is a critter called the Aardwolf as well ,i think it is somehow related to Hyenas .

    1. Naked mole rates are the best! Eons ago I used to visit Paul Sherman at his lab in Berkeley so I could see the naked mole rats run around in their tubes. Fascinating!

  11. How to weigh an aardvark? My suggestion is to put it into a box of known weight and weigh it that way.

  13. Yes indeed the aardwolf (Proteles cristata) is a small hyena, also mainly feeding on termites.
    That baby Aardvarkhas huge paws!

  14. Most animals who have continuously growing teeth naw something to wear them down. Does an aardvark have to do the same? If so, what do they use since termites wouldn’t do it?

  15. This aardvark is a girl, not a ‘he’, at least at second 24 the aardvark is called a ‘good girl’.

    Not very sensible to weigh a young animal is a place as noisy as that.

    1. From 0:23 the woman says: “…whoseagoodgirl, whoseagoodboy…” & I’m gonna go with baby ‘vark being a good boy! 🙂 [video description: "Winsol, the 3 week old baby aardvark is being closely watched by the zoo's care team as he spends most of his time with his mom Ali."]

      He’d prefer it dark – being nocturnal, but I doubt he cares about the radio noise – the veldt being a cacophony of bird & insect noise night & day.

      Another fun fact: He was named Winsol because he was born 21st December.

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