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Fun read for kids: animal alphabet A

Kids love to learn about animals, especially quirky and fun facts. I’d like to feature an animal for every letter of the alphabet for kids to learn about (you can show them this post or read it to them). I’ll be looking for the more obscure, odd, weird, unknown animals. Or the cutest. Or both. ;)

Wouldn’t it be fun to have an unique stuffed animal for every letter in the alphabet? Or maybe not just stuffed animals, but polymer clay creations or perhaps colouring pictures. Even printable birthday party sets cross my mind! You probably get the idea. I’m going offtopic though, so lets get started!

Today, I’d like to start at A for Aardvark. For regular readers, it probably won’t come as a surprise, since I’ve already made an aardvark plushie! (Although I haven’t had time yet to update the pattern, but I will, I promise!)

stuffed animal aardvark

Any idea where the names comes from? It comes from earlier Afrikaas (erdvark) and literally translates to “earth pig”, since aarde means earth and vark means pig. For any fellow Dutchies, this information was probably redundant. ;)

Did you know aardvarks are nocturnal animals? It makes the black hearts fabric even more suitable. ;) These animals have long, thin and almost snakelike tongues, which can be up to 30 centimetres long (12″)! And hence the (slightly disproportional) ribbon.

Why disproportional? Because an aardvark’s length is usually anywhere between 1 and 1.3 meters (which is 3.3 to 4.3 ft). Psst, this means its tongue is the same size as a third of its body. If you take its tail into account, its body can even reach nearly 2.2 metres (7 ft 3″)!

An Aardvark can smell concentrations of ants or termites and when it does, it digs in with its powerful front legs (while using its long ears to detect any approaching predators such as lions, leopards, hyenas and even pythons!). It can take up an astonishing number of insects with its sitcky tongue. Any idea how many? Records show as many as 50,000 insects in one night only!

Aardvark

That’s it for today and for aardvarks!

What’s your favourite animal starting with a B? Please tell me by leaving a comment! I might just create your favourite animal! :)

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