Tiny Goats Visit Aardvark

This is Ruth, a Nigerian dwarf goat kid. Her friend Sonia is a mini Nubian goat kid. They live at the Oregon Zoo's family farm with the rest of the herd. Oh hi! Hi! And sometimes they meet the other animals. Today we're gonna go see Kachimba the aardvark and actually he's gonna come and see us. We just need to walk through the door to get into the barn to meet Kachimba. Oh we know this area. I'm really excited to see how the goats react. The aardvark is a much bigger animal. A lot of people think they're kind of goat sized but Kachimba is about 150 pounds. Aardvarks are known for eating ants and they have a long tongue that they can stick right into an ant hill and slurp up all the ants. He is like nothing else in the entire world. Your house cat is more closely related to a walrus than an aardvark is to any other animal on the planet. They have shovel-like claws and they're so strong that they can dig through rock that's as hard as cement. Kachimba has yet to experience a lot of other animals so this will be a really great encounter for him. He'll get to see the goats and he'll get to interact with people he hasn't seen before. We're not going to have him on a leash just so he has a lot of freedom to explore and try new things. We will have the goats on a harness and a leash and lots of keepers around and we'll kind of hang to the side and let Kachimba get used to being in our area. I think he was kind of sniffing the floor getting used to the smells and then he noticed the goats and he became really interested. Ruth noticed him first a little bit from a distance and then she kind of held back because it's a large animal. Aardvarks are kind of meant to do one thing that's eat ants so it was interesting to see him actually interact with another animal. At one point Kachimba noticed the goats and he I think he maybe picked up a scent trail so he was kind of sniffing around and then he actually started to follow them a little bit. I think he got really curious so that was really fun to see. The goats really reacted and they clearly saw something they'd never seen before so I call this encounter a success. Can I give you a big hug? Oh here it comes again.