Taxonomists sort mammals into orders such as Rodentia, Carnivora and Chiroptera, most of which hold many living species. The aardvark sits alone in Tubulidentata. The name refers to its teeth, which lack enamel and are built from bundled tubes of dentine that wear down and grow continuously, unlike the enamel-capped teeth of nearly every other mammal.
That isolation is not a quirk of classification but a record of extinction. Fossil tubulidentates are known from Africa and Eurasia, yet all of them are gone. Genetic work places the aardvark within Afrotheria, the African radiation that also produced elephants, hyraxes, sea cows, tenrecs and golden moles, so its nearest living relatives look nothing like it.
The common description of the aardvark as an anteater is misleading. It is not related to the South American anteaters, and it takes termites as well as ants, opening mounds with its claws and collecting insects on a long sticky tongue. How aardvark numbers are responding to drought and rising temperatures across southern Africa remains poorly measured.