aardwolf
n. countablen. a small, shy animal from Africa that looks like a striped hyena but eats insects. It uses its long, sticky tongue to catch thousands of termites every night.
n. a nocturnal, insectivorous mammal of southern and eastern Africa, resembling a small hyena with a mane and vertical stripes. It belongs to the hyena family but possesses weak jaws and specialized teeth for a diet consisting almost exclusively of termites.
The aardwolf hunts for termites at night.
While on safari, the guide spotted an aardwolf emerging from its burrow to begin its nightly forage.
Unlike its larger carnivorous relatives, the aardwolf has evolved to occupy a specialized niche, consuming up to 300,000 termites in a single evening without damaging the mounds.
Borrowed from South African Dutch aardwolf (whence Afrikaans aardwolf), from aard- (prefix meaning ‘earth’) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European h₁er- (“earth”), probably from the fact that the animal rests in burrows in the ground during the day) + wolf (“wolf”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European wĺ̥kʷos (“wolf”)), influenced by English wolf (the second element of aardwolf is pronounced like that word, and one plural form is aardwolves; the Dutch plural form is aardwolven).