Food consumption and Aardvarks

This weekend was a busy weekend for random searches. The first search was the result of bringing together a group of people to drink enough to start wondering about various factual numbers. Ok, not just any people, but social science oriented folk - the worst of the lot I know. ;) The searches I performed oriented around how much food the average person in the U.S. consumes in pounds, per year, per day, etc.

The second search of the weekend was inspired by my friend's attempt to label an armadillo puppet. Instead of armadillo, he said aardvark, which I agreed with, although I had only a few hours ago called the same animal an armadillo. After a quick google image search, it appeared that the aardvark did in fact look an awful lot like the armadillo, minus a shell, which of course prompted the search what the difference is between an armadillo and an aardvark.

Search 1: Food consumption.

I found the best summary of what's out there on:
http://www.visualeconomics.com/food-consumption-in-america_2010-07-12/
*I'm a sucker for graphs

For more detailed information, the most recent food consumption information released by the usda can be found at: http://www.usda.gov/factbook/chapter2.pdf. I tried to find more recent information since this is mostly from 2000, but I found nothing about consumption in their agency reports.


Search 2: Armadillo vs. Aardvark.


For references sake, and anyone who's curious, the puppet looks like this:


So, how can we tell the difference between aardvarks and armadillos, are they related? [the answer is no, by the way] When I first searched for, "What is the difference between an aardvark and an armadillo?" I found a wikianswers site that said this: "An advark is another term for an anteater.." And I thought, that's funny, I really don't think an aardvark is an anteater (I like to watch nature shows, including David Attenborough's amazing series - all of them ;) ).

A picture of David Attenborough because he's awesome. =)

So, what really is an aardvark, I decided to go to more reliable sources, wikipedia and national geographic - mainly because they came up in the first page of my google search on each animal. ;)

Wikipedia: aardvark VS armadillo

From wikipedia I gathered that aardvarks are actually the sole remaining species of an order of mammals called afrotheria. It is most closely related to elephant shrews, elephants, and hyraxes, NOT anteaters. They are native to South Africa.

And they had this ridiculously cute picture for our entertainment:


Armadillos on the other hand are actually related to anteaters, but are also the sole family left from the mammalian order, cingulata. They are native to the Americas. On their page there was a crazy looking picture of the pink fairy armadillo which is only 12-15 cm. in length on average:

National geographic confirmed this information and looked pretty too, as they always do.
aardvark on national geographic
armadillo on national geographic

And only armadillos, well one species anyways, can do this:

Happy searching!