So ugly they're cute... Part 5

These next animals are perhaps a bitter harder to love, but that’s a part of what I love about them. 

Everything about the baby aardvark is a little odd–the floppy ears, the elongated piggish snout, the lumbering feet, the wrinkled skin, the sausage tail–and the whole effect strikes me as what Dr. Seuss would come up with if you had asked him to design an alien mammal.

And let’s be honest, you could tell me that the phrase “a face only a mother could love” was invented just for aardvarks and I would believe you.

Well call me “mother” because I think they’re adorable. (This is not unlike how I look when I sleep. Only less cute.)

They look similar to an anteater and eat a lot of the same things (ants obviously, as well as termites), but they are not related at all. In fact, aardvarks occupy their own little branch of the animal kingdom all by their lonesome. That’s what gives them that one-of-a-kind odd appearance that I find so completely endearing.

I want my job to be bottle-feeding aardvarks. No one told me that as an option at the high school career fair.

If you want to see more wrinkly Dr. Seuss space alien animals, then check out the source for my images, Zooborns.