A is aardvarks, armadillos and anteaters

As you can guess, I am an animal lover and aardvark was the first word that came to mind for A!  When googling for information on the aardvark, what got thrown up first was an Aardvark pest control organization, a management consulting firm and then a social search service--which was bought up by Google!!
An aardvark.  It is related to the South American anteater, is a native of Africa and it's name means 'earth pig' in Afrikaans.

Googling for armadillo,  I found that there is an armadillo which has something to do with the computer language C++!  I also found that there are many, many species of armadillos.  I had only heard about the nine-banded armadillos and seen pictures of them, from reading Gerald Durrell's books.  The picture here is from Wikipedia and is of the smallest species called the Pink Fairy Armadillo.  Looks rather like a rabbit wearing armour.

Google didn't come up with anything other than the animal when searching for anteater anyway.  In 'Three Singles to Adventure' by Gerald Durrell, there is a hilarious account of his lassoing an anteater.  The giant anteater is the one that is most commonly thought of as anteater, with it's really long slender snout.  But there are three other species.  This is a picture of a Northern tamandua--rather like an elongated panda!

So that's three types of anteaters.  Tomorrow is B