Fun facts about the African Shy Five
Who are the African Shy Five? Safari-goers to Africa have sightings of the famed Big Five (lion, leopard, elephant, rhino, buffalo) firmly in their sights when they venture to these shores. However, there is so much more to discover in the continent’s wild and wonderful places.
Visitors to Africa will not only encounter the Big Five but discover the often elusive African Shy Five, who provide an equally alluring experience as staring down the bigger beasts. Even mere glimpses of a porcupine, bat-eared fox, aardvark, meerkat or an aardwolf will create memories to last a lifetime.
Here are some did-you-knows and fun facts about the members of the African Shy Five:
1. The Aardvark
The African Shy Five: Did you know?
- With a tongue that’s at least 30 centimetres long, this nocturnal creature can consume up to 60,000 ants and termites in one sitting.
- They have very poor eyesight but an incredibly strong sense of smell while there’s nothing wrong with their ears either.
- Their claws are razor-sharp and used to dig up hard ground and termite mounds.
- During their nightly excursions, they sometimes travel more than 15 kilometres in search of food.
- Despite the aardvark’s odd body shape, it’s most closely related to elephants.
2. The Porcupine
The African Shy Five: Did you know?
- Even though its name means ‘quill pig’ in Latin, the porcupine is, in fact, a large rodent.
- A porcupine has roughly 30,000 quills on its body with between 500 and 800 microscopic hooks on the tip of each quill.
- The collective noun for porcupines is a ‘prickle’ while baby porcupines are called ‘porcupettes’.
- A porcupine will stamp its feet, click its teeth and rattle its quills to warn an attacker to stay away.
- Porcupines munch on bones to sharpen their powerful incisors.
3. The Bat-Eared Fox
The African Shy Five: Did you know?
- The animal is known for its enormous ears which can grow to almost 15 centimetres in length, giving it an excellent sense of hearing.
- Bat-eared foxes use these large ears to locate beetle larvae underneath the ground.
- Its diet consists mainly of ants and termites with the occasional mouse making an appearance on the menu.
- Unlike other members of the dog family, the male bat-eared fox takes on the majority of the parenting once the mother gives birth.
4. The Meerkat
The African Shy Five: Did you know?
- Meerkats are very sociable animals that live in groups of 20 or more.
- They live in different burrows that have a range of tunnels, and different rooms that allow them to remain cool during hot periods.
- The black bands around the meerkat’s eyes help protect them from the glare of the sun.
- Specific vocalisations help meerkats to communicate different information to the group, for instance, if a predator should approach.
- Individuals take turns to act as sentinels when the group is out foraging, standing on its hind legs to scan the area for potential danger.
5. The Aardwolf
The African Shy Five: Did you know?
- An aardwolf’s diet consists almost exclusively of termites, and a single animal can eat up to 300,000 termites per night.
- Regarded as a nocturnal creature, in winter an aardwolf will rather sleep at night and feed during the day.
- Aardwolves live in underground burrows and usually prefer the abandoned burrows of other animals such as aardvarks and porcupines.
- Unlike its name suggests, the aardwolf is not related to the aardvark and is actually a member of the hyena family.
- Aardwolves use their manes to appear bigger—especially when another aardwolf intrudes upon their territory.
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