The Snout of the Aardvark

This week's final animal is the aardvark, whose name is derived from the Afrikaans for "earth pig" and though it also sometimes called an "anteater" (which it does do), it is related to neither pigs nor the South American anteaters.  These burrowing nocturnal creatures only sustenance besides ants and termites is the aardvark cucumber which relies on the aardvarks to dig them up and scatter the seeds.  As a side not that I feel I must mention, part of the inspiration to include the aardvark in this micro-bestiary comes as a result of recently rereading the entirety Dave Sim's comic series, Cerebus.

The Scars of the Elephant Seal

For my second animal, I chose the bizarrely schnozzed elephant seal, which was once nearly hunted to extinction.  The alpha males in the various colonies get into often bloody fights over the harems of females.  After the thick-skinned horn-nosed rhino, the thickly scarred blubber-nosed elephant seal certainly seemed the way to go...haha.  In any event, the third one will buck the system...sort of.

The Hide of a Rhinoceros

It's been far too long since I've drawn any fauna (megafauna, in this particular case, to be exact), so I decided that this week would be a good week for some wilder samples of the Kingdom Animalia.  I kicked off with a good old Rhinoceros, those fascinating four-legged bulwarks of beastliness.  There's always been something fascinating, both contemplative and dangerous, about these huge and horned creatures.  I chose an image of the black rhino which is no for being far more aggressive than it's close cousin the white rhino...and far more apt to charge.

On a side note, every time I hear about finding another ring of poachers slaughtering them or some game warden finding them on their deathbeds minus horns because some associative magic nitwit thinks it'll keep his wang-dang-doodle hard, I verge on the apoplectic.  Honestly, if you're dumb enough to think that carving off a rhino horn is gonna help you get it up...you really don't deserve to be having sex.