The aardwolf's skull carries the reduced, peg-like teeth typical of a species that no longer needs to chew flesh. Instead it locates surface-foraging harvester termites, mainly of the genus Trinervitermes, by scent and sound, then sweeps them up with a long, sticky tongue in rapid licking bursts before the colony's soldiers can mount a chemical defence.
Estimates of nightly intake vary by study and season, but figures commonly cited by zoos and field researchers range from roughly 200,000 to 300,000 individual termites, amounting to under half a kilogram of insect biomass despite the huge count. Aardwolves are selective about species and avoid termites armed with strong chemical defences, and they rarely revisit the same mound on consecutive nights, likely to avoid depleting a colony or triggering stronger defensive responses.
A persistent point of confusion is the aardwolf's name and family placement: despite sounding related to the aardvark, it is a true hyaenid, more closely related to spotted and brown hyenas than to any anteater-like mammal. Exact nightly termite counts are difficult to verify directly in the wild and are largely inferred from stomach contents and foraging-time studies, so cited figures should be read as estimates rather than precise counts.