LESSON XLVII.
A REMARKABLE FAMILY.
“He prayeth best who loveth bestAll things both great and small,For the dear God who loveth usHe made and loveth all.”
“He prayeth best who loveth bestAll things both great and small,For the dear God who loveth usHe made and loveth all.”
“He prayeth best who loveth bestAll things both great and small,For the dear God who loveth usHe made and loveth all.”
“He prayeth best who loveth best
All things both great and small,
For the dear God who loveth us
He made and loveth all.”
—S. T. Coleridge.
In our last lesson we enumerated the orders into which the mammalian class has been divided. Of six of these orders we have already studied representatives. We have found in the duck-bill and two other animals, the only species of the order of monotremes; the opossum and kangaroo furnished us examples of the pouched animals. The third order mentioned is that of the edentata, or tooth-lacking creatures, and some of its families we will now discuss.
The name toothless is only partly descriptive of this group of mammals, because while some of them are really without any teeth, there are others that have the enormous number of ninety-eight. But all of the edentata are destitute of any teeth on the front of the jaws; there is always a vacant space there; and besides this, all the teeth are more or less imperfect, and have only one root. That vacant space in the front of the jaws, and the peculiarity of all the teeth being exactly alike, are constant characteristics of the edentata.
All of these animals are slow and clumsy in their movements, show very little intelligence, and have sharp, strong claws on all their toes. They are all natives of warm countries, and are most numerous in South America. None of the living edentata are more than four feet long including the tail, and some are no larger than rats. But from rocks and shell-beds, deep in the earth, have been taken fossil remains of this family, showing creatures which lived far back in the early periods of earth-building, some of them as large as an ox, or a rhinoceros, or an elephant.
The first of the edentata which we shall examine is called the sloth. It is a South American animal, and was for a long time classed among the monkeys, on account of its tree-climbing habits, and the long hair which covers its body. On the ground, to which it seldom descends, the sloth is the most ungainly of beasts. Its hind legs are very short, and its arms or fore legs are very long; its claws are strong and curved, and the toes are buried in the skin up to the nails, so that they can make no separate movements. Their leg joints turn outwards, and when the creatures try to walk on theground, they are compelled to double up their fore legs and go on their knees. Moreover, these sloths cannot bear strong light. When placed on the earth in the sunshine they seem to be crippled and blind.
The sloth has no tail, and no external ears. The eyes are small and sleepy; the motions of the creature are slow; its intelligence is very limited; in length it is about thirty inches, and the body has the general proportions of a monkey. Is this beast, then, a poor deformity? Or, in the noble plan of nature, is there some place which it exactly fits and fills? Let us see.
Now we shall place this queer little animal on its native trees. At once all is changed. Why, this sloth is all grace! You could not see a more beautiful climber. The short hind legs, crooked claws, long forearms, are just suited to tree life, for clambering safely and lightly from bough to bough. The sloth, thanks to its claws, is as safe hanging back downwards as a bird is safe in its nest. Those weak eyes are suited to the soft shadows of the leaves; the subdued light on the tree is just right for it.
The sloth is a vegetable feeder; as it climbs about the tree it nibbles off the sap leaves and the delicate new bark and twigs; hanging by the feet and one hand, it reaches out the other long arm, and picks fruit as dexterously as any school-boy; then holding the fruit to its mouth it eats it daintily. In museums or zoological gardens the sloths are furnished with a tree to climb upon, and are fed on fruit, vegetables, and bread and milk.
The next of the edentata which we shall observe is thearmadillo, one of the most singular of animals. At first sight you would feel sure it was not a mammal, but a reptile of the lizard or turtle family, for instead of being covered with hair or fur, it wears a heavy case or armor of large scales. These scales, or bony plates, are arranged in close bands about the body. The plates over the head, neck, and tail are immovable, but those on the centre of the back will lap, so that the creature can roll itself into a ball, bringing the nose, feet, and all parts of the body under protection of its horny armor. The under part of the body has no scales, but is covered with hair.
The armadillo has short legs with five-toed feet, each toe being furnished with a strong claw. The ears are very large; the eyes are small; the nostrils are set at the end of the long, pointed snout. The smallest of the species is about the size of a rat; the great armadillo is a yard long, and has in its widely opening mouth ninety-eight teeth.
Instead of living on trees like the sloth, it burrows in the ground; the rooms and galleries which they fashion for themselves are like those of the mole, only larger. The strong, curved claws are used to tear up the ground, and they do this so effectually that the animal will disappear beneath the surface in a very short time.
When undisturbed, the movement of the armadillo is a slow, a dignified march, suited to its short legs and heavy armor. When pursued, if it does not have opportunity to dig a burrow, it can run, and has been known to outstrip a man in a race. When attacked the creature prefers to tear up the earth and sink away out of sight; if it cannot do this, it rolls itself into a ball, and trusts to its armor.
As it paces about, it feeds daintily on vegetables and fruit; it waits under trees for the fruit to fall, and then nibbles at it very contentedly. Still it does not reject animal substances, not even carrion, for when it discovers a decaying carcass it feeds upon it; it also devours insects whenever it can get them.
A third curious specimen of this order is the ant-bear, which is chiefly found in Brazil and Guiana, but is not unknown in the other parts of South America. The ant-eater or “ant-bear” is sometimes a yard and a half long not including the tail. The most conspicuous part of this creature is its tail, which is plume-like, and carried over its back like that of a gray squirrel, but is very large, so that it overshadows most of the body, like a great canopy of fine, loose, waving hairs. The body is covered with long, coarse, dark hair; the legs are long and very strong, and the claws are deeply hooked and singularly powerful.
The ant-bear’s head is small, and tapers from the neck to a long, curved snout, at the end of which are the nostrils. The ears are small and placed far back on the head; the eyes are small and set half-way down the snout. This snout is well worth looking at; it is really a tube, with a small, round hole at the tip, through which the ant-eater can thrust out his tongue. The tongue is long, slim, round, worm-like, and covered with a sticky secretion. The ant-bear has no teeth.
The chief food of this odd animal is ants, and let us see its method of feasting. During the day, while ants work abroad, this animal sleeps; but it wanders out at night whenthe ants are in their hills. The ant-eater puts his long snout into a hill, and thrusting his sticky tongue into the rooms and galleries, gathers upon it ants and pupæ. Then he draws his tongue into the tube, swallows his prey, and repeats the performance. In like fashion the ant-eater will capture upon his slimy tongue other small insects.
This animal is mild in disposition, slow and listless in its motions. It prefers damp forests, or reedy marshes, for its home. Though quiet, it is not timid, and if attacked by a fox, wild-cat, or jaguar, it will defend itself, and often squeeze the enemy to death, or tear it to pieces with its powerful claws.
Owing to its lack of teeth and its tube-shaped mouth, it is evident that the ant-eater cannot chew food, but in addition to swallowing insects whole, it can take food by sucking the juices, as beetles and some other insects do. In the London Zoological Gardens were two ant-eaters, which not only ate insects when they could get them, but sucked up raw eggs and bread and milk, and would also suck the blood from raw meat.
The mother ant-eater is a fond and attentive parent. She has but one little one at a time, and she carries it about seated on her back. She never leaves it for a moment.
There is one variety of the ant-eater which lives on trees. This animal seldom comes to the ground; it eats fruit and the insects which frequent trees, and drinks the dew and rain from the leaves. It is a pretty creature of about the size of a small squirrel. This tree ant-eater does not carry her baby about on her back; instead, she finds a hole in thetree where she makes a nest of leaves, and there she puts her child to sleep while she hunts about for food. Every few minutes she returns and puts her little head into the hole to see how her baby is coming on.
In India, China, Java, and the Malay Islands, there is one of the edentata called a pangolin, which wears an extraordinary coat, from which it is sometimes called “the scaly lizard.” This coat is composed of large, leaf-like, pointed scales, set in the skin much in the fashion of the nails on your fingers. These scales lap over each other like roofing-slates, and extend from the nose to the tip of the tail. A strip on the under side of the body is bare of scales.
Like the armadillo, the pangolin can roll itself into a ball if it is in danger. Also like the armadillo, the pangolins have short, strong legs, strong, curved claws, and dig burrows. But they are not so fond of burrowing as the armadillo, and if they find a hollow in a tree they take that for a home. While the armadillos are short and thick in body, and much like a tortoise in shape, the pangolins are slender and lizard-like.
The pangolin has no trace of teeth, and its method of feeding is like that of the ant-bear. The head is short and the tongue less slim than the ant-bear’s, but the manner of procuring food is the same. It has the largest and brightest eyes of all its order. There is no external ear, but hidden under the scales on the head there is an ear opening.
When the pangolin wishes to defend itself, it can erect its scales as the porcupine does its quills, and so it looks very fierce. All the motions of the pangolin are slow except the play of its tongue, which darts in and out with great rapidity.
From a study of these animals we see, that while the edentata differ remarkably in many respects, they are alike in these particulars: There are no teeth on the front of the jaws; their toes have strong claws; their motions are very slow; their intelligence is small; they are inhabitants of South America or the eastern part of Asia.