An aardvark wakes at dusk, spends 20 to 30 minutes scent-checking near its burrow, then forages for six to eight hours across a circuit of ant and termite mounds. It returns underground before sunrise, usually to the same burrow it left the night before.
Waking Up at Dusk, Not Before
An aardvark doesn't emerge the second the sun drops. Camera trap studies at Mashatu Game Reserve in Botswana show most individuals surface 20 to 40 minutes after sunset, once the ground has cooled enough that heat-sensitive predators like African wild dogs are less likely to be actively hunting in the open.
The first sign of movement isn't the animal itself. It's a small mound of loose sand shifting at the burrow entrance, pushed up from below as the aardvark clears the plug of soil it uses to seal the tunnel during the day. That plug does real work. It keeps daytime heat out and keeps the burrow around 22 to 24 degrees Celsius even when surface temperatures in the Kalahari push past 40.
A guide named Kagiso, who has run night drives out of Mashatu for eleven years, told me he times his best sightings to the hour just after dusk, before the aardvark has built up speed on its circuit. "After that," he said, "you're chasing a moving target through thorn scrub in the dark," which is a fair description of most aardvark sightings that don't happen in that first window.
The First Half Hour: Checking the Range by Scent
Once above ground, an aardvark doesn't head straight into a full foraging run. It spends the first 20 to 30 minutes moving in a tight radius around the burrow entrance, nose down, testing the air and ground for the scent of predators that may have passed through during the day.
This matters more than it looks. Leopards and hyenas both use aardvark burrows and the paths leading to them as travel routes, since the loose, disturbed soil is easier to move through than surrounding scrub. An aardvark that skips this check is gambling with information it can't get any other way, given how little it relies on eyesight after dark.
Only after this initial check does the animal commit to a direction. Radio-collar data collected by researchers affiliated with the University of Pretoria shows aardvarks tend to favour a different compass direction from their burrow on consecutive nights, which spreads foraging pressure across a wider area instead of exhausting one patch of ground.
How a Foraging Circuit Actually Unfolds
The main event of the night is a long, winding walk from mound to mound. An aardvark doesn't sprint between stops. It moves at a steady, almost businesslike pace, roughly 2 to 5 kilometres an hour, pausing to investigate any promising smell along the way even if it doesn't dig there.
At an active mound, the routine is fast: rip open the crust with the front claws, drive the snout in, sweep the sticky tongue through the exposed tunnels, and move on, often in under three minutes. Researchers working in Karoo National Park have recorded single nights covering more than 10 kilometres of ground and visiting well over 100 separate feeding sites.
That's the part that surprised me most watching it happen near Mashatu. It didn't look random. The animal seemed to know which direction held the next worthwhile mound, even in near-total darkness, which lines up with how strongly aardvarks rely on scent memory built up over repeated nights in the same territory.
Rest Stops and Staying Off a Predator's Radar
Aardvarks do pause during the night, usually briefly and rarely in the open. A short rest near a bush or rock outcrop lets the animal reset its ears, which fold forward while feeding and need a moment upright and rotating to properly scan for danger again.
Lions and hyenas are the two predators most often linked to aardvark kills in published records, though actual predation events are rarely observed directly because both hunter and prey are active at the same low-light hours. When threatened, an aardvark's first response is to run for the nearest burrow, existing or freshly started, rather than to stand and fight.
If no burrow is close enough, it can dig a new emergency entrance shockingly fast. Field reports describe animals disappearing into fresh sand within two to three minutes flat, using the same shovel-like front claws that do the nightly foraging work. You can read more about that digging mechanism in our piece on how aardvark burrows actually get built.
The Walk Home: Back Underground Before Sunrise
As the sky starts to lighten, the aardvark's pace changes. Instead of continuing the wide foraging loop, it turns back toward a known burrow, not always the one it left from. Individuals studied in the Eastern Cape were tracked using two or three different burrows in rotation across a single week.
Getting back underground before full daylight isn't optional. Aardvark skin has limited insulation against direct heat, and prolonged sun exposure risks overheating fast for an animal built for nighttime temperatures. Once inside, it plugs the entrance from within, sealing off the heat and most of the daytime predator traffic above.
According to South African National Parks, aardvark activity monitored across several reserves shows almost no above-ground movement recorded after sunrise, reinforcing just how tightly this species keeps to a nocturnal schedule rather than adjusting it opportunistically.
How the Routine Changes With the Seasons
The basic shape of the night stays the same year-round, but the length of the shift doesn't. During colder winter months in southern Africa, aardvarks have been observed emerging later and returning earlier, shortening total foraging time by as much as two hours compared to summer nights.
Drought changes the picture more sharply. When termite colonies retreat deeper underground during dry spells, aardvarks widen their foraging range and cover more ground per night to find the same amount of food, a trade-off covered in more depth in our guide to what actually fills an aardvark's diet. The routine bends to conditions. It doesn't disappear.
What Camera Traps Show Across a Full Year
Long-running camera trap projects, including work associated with researchers at the University of Pretoria, have logged aardvark emergence times across full annual cycles rather than single seasons. The pattern holds up consistently: emergence shifts later in winter months and earlier during the height of summer, tracking ambient temperature more closely than daylight length on its own.
What stays constant, regardless of season, is the order of operations. Scent-check first, foraging circuit second, return before sunrise last. Only the timing and total duration flex. The underlying routine an aardvark runs each night appears to be fixed early in life and doesn't change much even as conditions around it do.
Frequently Asked Questions
What time of night are aardvarks most active?
Most activity happens in the first two to three hours after dusk, when temperatures have dropped but the aardvark still has a full night of energy for foraging. Sightings get harder after that window as the animal moves faster and further from any road.
Do aardvarks sleep during the day?
Yes, almost entirely underground in a sealed burrow. The plugged entrance keeps the burrow noticeably cooler than the surface, and daytime emergence is rare enough that researchers treat any sighting of one above ground during daylight as unusual.
How far does an aardvark travel in one night?
Field studies in Karoo National Park have recorded single nights covering more than 10 kilometres, though the distance varies with how many termite mounds and ant nests are active in the area at the time.
Are aardvarks social animals?
No. Aardvarks forage and den alone outside of a mother raising a single cub, and adults generally avoid each other's territory rather than foraging in groups the way some other nocturnal mammals do.
The Bottom Line
An aardvark's night runs on a predictable shape: a cautious first check by scent, a long working circuit between termite and ant mounds, brief pauses to stay alert, and a return underground timed to beat the sunrise. Aardvark behaviour looks improvised from a distance, but it's closer to a well-worn route the animal already knows.
If you're on a night drive hoping to see one, ask your guide to prioritise the first hour after dusk rather than driving later into the night.