habits. Dr. Goodman describes it as most active early in the morning,
at mid-day, and in the evening; and they are well known in the country
to have the custom of coming daily to the surface _exactly at noon_.
We read of a captive Shrew Mole which ate meat, cooked or raw, drank
freely, and was lively and playful, following the hand of his feeder by
the scent, burrowing for a short distance in the loose earth, and after
making a small circle, returning for more food. In eating he employed
his flexible snout to thrust the food into his mouth, doubling it so as
to force it directly backwards, as described in Dr. Richardson's "North
American Zoology."
James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, remarks, in his usual impressive
manner:--"The most unnatural persecution that ever was raised in a
country is that against the Mole--that innocent and blessed little
pioneer, who enriches our pastures annually with the first top-dressing,
dug with great pains and labour from the fattest of the soil beneath.
The advantages of this top-dressing are so apparent that it is really
amazing how our countrymen should have persisted, for nearly half a
century, in the most manly and valiant endeavours to exterminate the
Moles! If a hundred men and horses were employed on a pasture farm of
from fifteen hundred to two thousand acres, in raising and driving
manure for a top-dressing of that farm, they would not do it so
effectually, so neatly, or so equally as the natural number of Moles. In
June, July, and August, the Mole-hills are all spread by the crows and
lambs--the former for food, and the latter in the evenings of warm days
after a drought has set in. The late Duke of Buccleuch was the first who
introduced Mole-catching into Scotland."
THE GREAT ANT-BEAR.
A fine living specimen of this comparatively rare animal was first
exhibited in the Zoological Society's gardens, in the Regent's-park,
1853. It is stated to be the first specimen brought alive to England,
and accordingly excited considerable attention. It was one of a pair,
captured near the Rio Negro, in the southern province of Brazil, and
shipped for England by some German travellers. The male died on the
voyage; the female arrived in London in 1853, and was exhibited in
Broad-street, St. Giles's, until purchased by the Zoological Society for
the sum of 200_l._ The advantage of this live specimen to naturalists
has been very great. Hitherto the examples engraved by Buffon and
Shaw were both derived from stuffed specimens, and had the inevitable
defects and shortcomings of such. Sir John Talbot Dillon, in his
"Travels through Spain," published in 1780, states that a specimen of
the Ant-Bear, from Buenos Ayres, was alive at Madrid in 1776: it is now
stuffed and preserved in the Royal Cabinet of Natural History at Madrid.
The persons who brought it from Buenos Ayres say it differs from the
Ant-eater, which only feeds on emmets and other insects, whereas this
would eat flesh, when cut in small pieces, to the amount of four or five
pounds. From the snout to the extremity of the tail this animal is two
yards in length, and his height is about two feet; the head very narrow,
the nose long and slender. The tongue is so singular that it looks like
a worm, and extends above sixteen inches. The body is covered with long
hair of a dark brown, with white stripes on the shoulders; and when he
sleeps, he covers his body with his tail. This account, it will be seen
hereafter, corresponds very accurately with that of the animal purchased
by the Zoological Society.
[Illustration: THE GREAT ANT-BEAR.]
Mr. Wallace, who travelled on the Amazon and Rio Negro, about the year
1853, relates:--"The living specimen of this singular animal is a great
rarity, even in its native country. In fact, there is not a city in
Brazil where it would not be considered almost as much a curiosity as
it is here. In the extensive forests of the Amazon the great Ant-eater
is, perhaps, as abundant as in any part of South America; yet, during
a residence there of more than four years, I never had an opportunity
of seeing one. Once only I was nearly in at the death, finding a bunch
of hairs from the tail of a specimen which had been killed (and eaten)
a month previous to my arrival, at a village near the Capiquiare. In
its native forests the creature feeds almost entirely on white ants,
tearing open their nests with its powerful claws, and thrusting in its
long and slender tongue, which, being probably mistaken for a worm,
is immediately seized by scores of the inhabitants, who thus become
an easy prey. The Indians, who also eat white ants, catch them in a
somewhat similar manner, by pushing into the nest a grass-stalk, which
the insects seize and hold on to most tenaciously. It may easily be
conceived that such an animal must range over a considerable extent of
country to obtain a plentiful supply of such food, which circumstance,
as well as its extreme shyness and timidity, causes it to be but rarely
met with, and still more rarely obtained alive."
We have seen that the Ant-Bear lives exclusively upon ants, to procure
which he tears open the hills, and when the ants flock out to defend
their dwellings, draws over them his long, flexible tongue, covered
with glutinous saliva, to which the ants consequently adhere; and he
is said to repeat this operation twice in a second. "It seems almost
incredible," says Azara, "that so robust and powerful an animal can
procure sufficient sustenance from ants alone; but this circumstance has
nothing strange in it, for those who are acquainted with the tropical
parts of America, and have seen the enormous multitude of these insects,
which swarm in all parts of the country to that degree that their hills
often almost touch one another for miles together." The same author
informs us that domestic Ant-Bears were occasionally kept by different
persons in Paraguay, and that they had even been sent alive to Spain,
being fed upon bread-and-milk mixed with morsels of flesh minced very
small. Like all animals which live upon insects, the Ant-eaters are
capable of sustaining a total deprivation of nourishment for an almost
incredible time.
The Great Ant-Bear's favourite resorts are low, swampy savannahs, along
the banks of rivers and stagnant ponds; also frequenting humid forests,
but never climbing trees, as falsely reported by Buffon. His pace is
slow and heavy, though, when hard pressed, he increases his rate, yet
his greatest velocity never half equals the ordinary running of a man.
When pressed too hard, or urged to extremity, he turns obstinate,
sits upon his hind-quarters like a bear, and defends himself with his
powerful claws. Like that animal, his usual and only mode of assault is
by seizing his adversary with his fore-paws, wrapping his arms round
him, and endeavouring, by this means, to squeeze him to death. His great
strength and powerful muscles would easily enable him to accomplish his
purpose in this respect, even against the largest animals of his native
forests, were it but guided by ordinary intelligence, or accompanied
with a common degree of activity; but in these qualities there are
few animals indeed who do not greatly surpass the Ant-Bear; so that
the different stories handed down by writers on natural history from
one to another, and copied, without question, into the histories and
descriptions of this animal, may be regarded as pure fictions. "It is
supposed," says Don Felix d'Azara, "that the jaguar himself dares not
attack the Ant-Bear, and that, if pressed by hunger, or under some other
strong excitement, he does so, the Ant-Bear embraces and hugs him so
tightly as very soon to deprive him of life, not even relaxing his hold
for hours after life has been extinguished in his assailant. Such is
the manner in which the Ant-eater defends himself; but it is not to be
believed that his utmost efforts could prevail against the jaguar, who,
by a single bite, or blow of his paw, could kill the Ant-eater before he
was prepared for resistance, so slow are his motions, even in an extreme
case; and, being unable to leap or turn with ordinary rapidity, he is
forced to act solely upon the defensive. The flesh of the Ant-eater is
esteemed a delicacy by the Indians; and, though black, and of a strong
musky flavour, is sometimes even met with at the tables of Europeans."
The habits of the Great Ant-Bear in captivity have been described
scientifically yet popularly, from the Zoological Society's specimen,
by Professor Owen, who writes:--"When we were introduced to this, the
latest novelty at the noble vivarium in the Regent's-park, we found the
animal busy sucking and licking up--for his feeding is a combination
of the two actions--the contents of a basin of squashed eggs. The
singularly long and slender head, which looks more like a slightly bent
proboscis, or some such appendage to a head, was buried in the basin,
and the end of the lithe or flexible tongue, like a rat's tail, or a
writhing black worm, was ever and anon seen coiling up the sides of
the basin, as it was rapidly protruded and withdrawn. The yellow yolk
was dripping with the abundant ropy saliva secreted during the feeding
process from the exceedingly small terminal mouth; for the jaws are not
slit open, as in the ordinary construction of the mouths of quadrupeds,
and the head, viewed sideways, seems devoid of mouth; but this important
aperture--by some deemed the essential character of an animal--is a
small orifice or slit at the end of the tubular muzzle, just being
enough, apparently, to let the vermiform tongue slip easily in and
out. The tongue, the keeper told us, was sometimes protruded as far as
fourteen inches from the mouth."
By the Qjuarani Indians the beast is known by a name which is, in
Spanish, "little mouth." The Portuguese and Spanish peons call it by a
name equivalent to "Ant-Bear." In the Zoological Catalogue the animal
is denominated _Myrmocophaga jubata_, or the "Maned Ant-eater." This
appellation would very well suit the animal if, as most spectators
commonly imagine at first sight, its head was where its tail is,
for the tail is that part of the animal on which the hair is most
developed, after the fashion of a mane; whilst the actual head appears
much more like a tail, of a slender, almost naked, stiff, rounded
kind. The body is wholly covered by long, coarse hair, resembling hay,
rapidly lengthening from the neck backwards to six or eight inches,
and extending on the tail from ten to eighteen inches. The colour is
greyish brown, with an oblique black band, bordered with white, on
each shoulder. The animal measures about four feet from the snout
to the root of the tail; and the tail, three feet long, resembles a
large screen of coarse hair. When the animal lies down, it bends its
head between its fore legs, slides these forward, and crosses them in
front of the occiput, sinks its haunches by bending its hind legs and
bringing them close to the fore feet; then, leaning against the wall
of its den, on one side, it lays the broad tail over the other exposed
side of the body, by the side bend of that part, like the movement of
a door or screen. Nothing is now visible of the animal but the long
coarse hair of its _natural and portable blanket_. When it is enjoying
its siesta, you cannot form any conception of its very peculiar shape
and proportions; an oblong heap of a coarse, dry, _greyish thatch_ is
all that is visible. When, however, the keeper enters the den with any
new dainty, as cockroaches, crickets, maggots, or meal-worms, to tempt
the huge insect-devourer, the quick-hearing animal unveils its form by
a sweeping movement of the thatch outwards, the tail that supports it
rotating, as if joined by a kind of door-hinge to the body; the head is
drawn out from between the fore limbs; the limbs are extended, and the
entire figure of this most grotesque of quadrupeds stalks forth. The
limbs are short; the fore limbs grow rather thicker to their stumpy
ends, which look as if the feet had been amputated. The four toes, with
their claws, are bent inwards, and are of very unequal length. This is
the most singular part of the animal: it is also the most formidable
member, and, indeed, bears the sole weapon of defence the beast
possesses. The innermost toe, answering to the thumb on the fore limb of
the neighbouring chimpanzee, is the shortest. A fifth toe seems to be
buried in the outside callosity, on which the animal rests its stumpy
feet while walking. At the back part of the sole, or palm, of the fore
foot, is a second large callosity, which receives the point of the great
claw in its usual state of inward inflection. Against this callosity the
animal presses the claw when it seizes any object therewith; and Azara,
as we have seen, avers that nothing can make the Ant-Bear relax its
grasp of an object so seized.
With respect to the jaguar being sometimes found dead in the grasp of
the Great Ant-eater, Professor Owen observes that its muscular force
resembles that of the cold-blooded reptiles in the force and endurance
of the contractile action; and, like the reptiles, the Sloths and
Ant-Bears can endure long fasts.
Woe to the unlucky or heedless aggressor whose arm or leg may be seized
by the Ant-Bear. The strength of the grasp sometimes breaks the bone.
The Ant-Bear never voluntarily lets go, and the limb so grasped can be
with difficulty extricated, even after the animal has been killed. To
put the beast, however, _hors de combat_, no other weapon is needed
than a stout stick. "With this," says Azara. "I have killed many by
dealing them blows on the head, and with the same security as if I had
struck the trunk of a tree. With a mouth so small, and formed as already
described, the Ant-Bear cannot bite; and, if it could, it would be
useless, for it has no teeth."
"Like a lawyer," says Professor Owen, "the tongue is the chief organ
by which this animal obtains its livelihood in its natural habitat.
The warmer latitudes of South America, to which part of the world the
Ant-Bear is peculiar, abound in forests and luxuriant vegetation; the
insects of the ant and termite tribes that subsist on wood, recent
or decaying, equally abound. With one link in the chain of organic
independencies is interlocked another; and as the surplus vegetation
sustains the surplus insect population, so a peculiar form of mammalian
life finds the requisite conditions of existence in the task of
restraining the undue multiplication of the wood-consuming insects."
The number of male Ant-eaters is supposed to be considerably smaller
than that of the females, which circumstance favours the inference that
the extinction of the species, like those of the _edentata_ in general,
is determined upon.[6]
Large as the Ant-Bear is in comparison with the animals on which it
naturally feeds, there appear to have been still larger Ant-Bears in the
old times of South America. Fossil remains of nearly allied quadrupeds
have been detected in both the fresh-water deposits and bone-caves of
the post-pliocene period in Buenos Ayres and Brazil.
In examining the fossil remains has been found evidence that the nervous
matter destined to put in action the muscular part of the tongue was
equal to half of that nervous matter which influences the whole muscular
system of a man. No other known living animal offers any approximation
to the peculiar proportions of the lingual nerves of the fossil animal
in question except the Great Ant-eater; but the size of the animal
indicated by the fossil was three times that of our Ant-eater. For this
strange monster, thus partially restored from the ruins of a former
world, Professor Owen proposes the name of _Glossotherium_, which
signifies tongue-beast.
Evidence of such a creature has been given by Dr. Lund, the Danish
naturalist, resident in Brazil: among the fossil remains here (limestone
caves of the province Minas) he discovered traces of the Great
Ant-eater, which, however, are too imperfect to enable us to determine
more accurately its relation to existing species. The fragments indicate
an animal the size of an ox! Were the insect prey of these antediluvian
Ant-eaters correspondingly gigantic?
Two circumstances very remarkable were observed in the Zoological
Society's Great Ant-eater: the hinge-like manner in which the animal
worked its tail when it had laid itself down, throwing it over the
whole of its body and enveloping itself completely; and the peculiar
vibratory motion of the long vermiform tongue when protruded from the
mouth in search of food. The tongue is not shot forth and retracted,
like that of the chameleon, but protruded gradually, _vibrating_ all the
time, and in the same condition withdrawn into the mouth.
Another species of Ant-eater is the _Tamandua_, much inferior in size to
the Great Ant-Bear, being scarcely so large as a good sized cat, whilst
the other exceeds the largest greyhound in length. The Tamandua inhabits
the thick primæval forests of tropical America, and is never found on
the ground, but exclusively in trees, where it lives upon termites,
honey, and, according to Azara, even bees, which in those countries
form their hives among the loftiest branches of the forest; and having
no sting, they are more readily despoiled of their honey than their
congeners of our own climate. When about to sleep it hides its muzzle in
the fur of its breast, falls on its belly, letting its fore-feet hang
down on each side, and wrapping the whole tightly round with its tail.
The female, as in the Great Ant-eater, has but two pectoral mammæ, and
produces but a single cub at a birth, which she carries about with her
on her shoulders for the first three or four months. _Tamandua_ is the
Portuguese name; the French and English call it _fourmiller_ and Little
Ant-Bear.
The latter are the names of a still smaller species, which does not
exceed the size of the European squirrel. Its native country is Guayana
and Brazil. It is called in Surinam _kissing-hand_, as the inhabitants
pretend it will never eat, at least when caught, but that it only licks
its paws in the same manner as the bear; that all trials to make it eat
have proved in vain, and that it soon dies in confinement. Von Sack, in
a voyage to Surinam, had two of these Ant-eaters which would not eat
eggs, honey, meat, or ants; but when a wasps'-nest was brought they
pulled out the nymphæ and ate them eagerly, sitting in the posture of a
squirrel. Von Sack showed this phenomenon to many of the inhabitants of
Surinam, who all assured him that it was the first time they had ever
known that species of animal to take any nourishment.
Von Sack describes his Ant-eaters as often sleeping all the day long
curled together, and fastened by their prehensile tails to one of the
perches of the cage. When touched they raised themselves on their
hind-legs, and struck with their fore-paws at the object which disturbed
them, like the hammer of a clock striking a bell, with both paws at the
same time, and with a great deal of force. They never attempted to run
away, but were always ready for defence when attacked.
The discovery of the true nature of the food of this species is
particularly desirable, and may enable us to have the animal brought
alive to this country, a thing which we believe has not been attempted;
and which, if attempted, has certainly never succeeded. To procure or
carry ants during a long sea-voyage is impracticable, but the larvæ of
wasps can be obtained in any quantity, and will keep for months; so that
the most serious difficulty to the introduction of the little Ant-eater
being thus removed, it would only require to be protected from the
effects of a colder climate, which may be as easily done in its case as
in that of other South America mammalia.
The Porcupine Ant-eater of New Holland, now very uncommon in New South
Wales, is regarded, of its size, the strongest quadruped in existence.
It burrows readily. Its mode of eating is very curious, the tongue being
used sometimes in the manner of that of the chameleon, and at other
times in that in which a mower uses his scythe, the tongue being curved
laterally, and the food, as it were, swept into the mouth.
The original Great Ant-Bear, received at the Gardens of the Zoological
Society on the 29th of September, 1853, died on the 6th of July, 1854.
There are now two of these animals living in the Gardens, one of which
is a remarkably fine specimen.
FOOTNOTE:
[6] Proceedings of the Zoological Society.
CURIOSITIES OF BATS.
These harmless and interesting little animals have not only furnished
objects of superstitious dread to the ignorant, but have proved to the
poet and the painter a fertile source of images of gloom and terror.
The strange combination of character of beast and bird, which they were
believed to possess, is supposed to have given to Virgil the idea of the
Harpies.
Aristotle says but little about the Bat; and Pliny is considered to
have placed it among the Birds, none of which, he observes, with the
exception of the Bat, have teeth. Again, he notices it as the only
winged animal that suckles its young, and remarks on its embracing its
two little ones, and flying about with them. In this arrangement he was
followed by the older of the more modern naturalists. Belon, doubtingly,
places it at the end of the Night-birds; and the Bat, _Attaleph_ (bird
of darkness), was one of the unclean animals of the Hebrews; and in
Deuteronomy xxv. 18, it is placed among the forbidden birds.
Even up to a late period Bats were considered as forming a link between
quadrupeds and birds. The common language of our own ancestors, however,
indicates a much nearer approach to the truth in the notions entertained
by the people than can be found in the lucubrations of the learned.
The words _rere-mouse_ and _flitter-mouse_, the old English names for
the Bat--the former derived from the Anglo-Saxon "aræan," to raise, or
rear up, and mus; the latter from the Belgic, signifying "flying or
flittering mouse,"--show that in their minds these animals were always
associated with the idea of quadrupeds. The first of these terms is
still used in English heraldry; though it may have ceased to belong to
the language of the country. "The word _flitter-mouse_," says Mr. Bell,
"sometimes corrupted into _flintymouse_, is the common term for the Bat
in some parts of the kingdom, particularly in that part of the county
of Kent in which the language, as well as the aspect and names of the
inhabitants, retain more of the Saxon character than will be found,
perhaps, in any other part of England.
Ben Jonson has--
"Once a Bat, and ever a Bat! a rere-mouse,
And bird o'twilight, he has broken thrice.
. . .
Come, I will see the flicker-mouse, my fly."
_Play._--_New Inn._
The same author uses flitter-mouse also:--
"And giddy flitter-mice, with leather wings."
_Sad Shepherd._
Calmet describes the Bat as an animal having the body of a mouse and the
wings of a bird; but he erroneously adds, "It never grows tame."
Some persons are surprised at Bats being classed by naturalists, not
with birds, but quadrupeds. They have, in fact, no other claim to be
considered as birds than that of their being able to suspend and move
themselves in the air, like some species of fish, but to a greater
degree. They suckle their young, are covered with hair, and have
no wings, but arms and lengthened fingers or toes furnished with a
membrane, by which they are enabled to fly.