The Life of Animals; the Mammals
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ALBERT R. MANN LIBRARY AT CORNELL UNIVERSITY 15'^°''"*" ""'^'e'^sity QL 706 Library ^'^ummmifmim?'^' *''* '"ammals, by Ernes 3 1924 002 877 581 The original of tiiis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924002877581 THE LIFE OF ANIMALS THE MAMMALS •y^^y^' 4 \ THE LIFE OF ANIMALS THE MAMMALS BY ERNEST INGERSOLL AUTHOR OF "WILD NEIGHBORS," "AN ISLAND IN THE AIR," ETC., ETC. pyiTH FIFTEEN FULL-P/iGE COLOR PLATES AND MANY OTHER ILLUSTRATIONS ISt'ia gorfe THE MACMILLAN COMPANY LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd. 1906 All rights reserved X. Copyright, 1906, By the macmillan company. Set up and electrotyped. Published May, 1906. NortonrjB jpteaa J. S. CuBhing Si Co. — Berwick & Smith Co. Norwood, Maaa., U.S.A. ; It is possible to make natural history entertaining and attrac- tive as well as instructive, with no loss in scientific precision, but with great gain in stimulating, strengthening, and confirm- ing the wholesome influence which the study of the natural sciences may exert upon the higher grades of mental culture nor is it a matter of little moment so to shape the knowledge which results from the naturalist's labors that its increase may be susceptible of the widest possible diffusion. — Elliott Coues. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS A PREFACE is needless for a book of this kind, which needs no explanation and could be saved by no excuses ; and I may substitute for it an Acknowledgment of Gratitude due to those who have helped me, much to the advantage of the reader. Foremost among them is Mr. George P. Brett, President of The Macmillan Company, who has placed at my disposal every facility for, and put no obstacles in the way of, my making the best book within my power. If I have not suc- ceeded, it is not the fault of my publishers. Next I wish to recognize gratefully the important service rendered the book by Dr. W. D. Matthew, Associate Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology in the American Museum of Natural History in New York, in giving me the benefit of his eminent knowledge of extinct mammals and in super- vising those pages of the book relating to them. The reader and myself are similarly indebted to Professor Henry F. Osborn, Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology in the American Museum of Natural History ; to Dr. Daniel G. Elliot, Director of the Field Columbian Museum, Chicago; to Mr. William T. Hornaday, Director of the New York Zoological Park, and to certain others, for the criticism and approval of parts of the work in which they were especially interested and well informed. The liberahty of the New York Zoological Society has enabled me to place before the reader many of the original and admirable pictures of animals made by the Society's Photographer, Elwin R. Sanborn ; while other excellent illus- A CKNO WLEDGMEN TS trative material in this extremely difficult branch of photog- raphy has been derived from the private collections of Messrs. L. W. Brownell, Silas M. Lottridge, Clarence Lown, H. W. Shepheard-Walwyn, W. H. Fisher, and others. Lastly, I desire to mention the aid given by my daughter, Helen Ingersoll, who drew twelve of the fifteen colored plates and many of the smaller illustrations in the text. E. I. New York, May I, 1906. CONTENTS LIST OF COLORED PLATES Egyptian Cat Frontispiece FACING PAGE American Monkeys 40 Jaguar and Tapir 100 Hyenas 158 Ratel and Ichneumon . 176 Fox and Jackal 208 Bear 214 Antelope Heads 268 Harnessed Antelope 270 Sable Antelope 274 Okapi 296 Fallow Deer 308 Gophers and Ground Squirrel 426 Sugar Squirrel 502 THE LIFE OF MAMMALS INTRODUCTION This is to be a book upon the mode of life, the history and the relationships, of the most famihar and important class of animals — the Mammals. It is the class, indeed, to which we ourselves belong, as well as do most of our domesticated servants and pets. From it we derive an enormous amount of aid and material. It furnishes us with a large part of our clothing and bedding; it supplies the principal element of our food; it provides materials for making a multitude of things of daily use; and were it not for the aid of these animals the farmer could hardly raise his crops, nor the merchant dispose of his wares, nor the rest of us enjoy many of our ordinary comforts and pleasures. And yet the surprising circumstance remains, that we have no popular name for this extremely important group. If I had announced this simply as a book on "animals," without any descriptive subtitle, a reader might have under- stood in a general way what it was to be, yet he could not be certain; for any living creature is an "animal," and a book under that title might properly include the whole range of zoology. Hence a distinctive name is required if the author's purpose is to become clear. One cannot say "quadrupeds" with accuracy, for that would include four-footed reptiles and amphibians, while it would exclude man, who has only two feet, and such marine members of the class as have no limbs THE LIFE Of MAMMALS at all. Similarly the terms "beast" and "brute" are inaccu- the rate or wrong ; and so we are driven to borrow a term from Latin to supply the need. This is the word "mammal" — a word easy to remember, definite in meaning, which ought to come as commonly and properly into use as "bird" or "fish," since, hke them, it stands for its whole class and for nothing else. This term expresses the one great dis- tinction which separates mammals from all other animals, namely, the feeding of their young upon milk, a nutritious liquid, rich in sugar and fats, secreted by the mother's system in glands or milk bags from which the milk is sucked out by the little ones, whose stomachs, at first, can make use of no other kind of food. These milk glands are called in Latin mamma, whence the technical class name Mammalia, and also our English word "mammal" — an animal that suckles its young. This fact alone, had we no other means of judging, would show us that the mammals stand highest in the scale of animal life. The simply organized animalcules, the lowly worms, shellfish, and insects, grow up without any parental attention — are simply turned loose to shift for themselves. Very few fishes or reptiles take any special care of their little ones, and none feed them. In the case of many birds the young are able to run about and pick up their own living as soon as they emerge from the eggshell ; and where they remain in the nest for a time and are cared for by the parents the food brought them is usually the same as that of the old ones. This state of things shows progress; and in a general way the rule holds that the higher the organization of the animal the more helpless are its young, and the more they need parental care, time to mature, protection, and special food. Hence the pecuHar provision of the mother's milk in this class is a sure indication of the high rank of mammals as a group ; and the infants of the superior members of it depend upon their milk diet much longer than do the inferior members. THE HAIRY COAT Another distinctive peculiarity of the mammals is their hairy covering — something that belongs to no other class of animals, and which gives an immense advantage. A hair is a threadlike outgrowth from a minute nipple sunken in the skin, which continues to secrete the horny substance at its root, . as the hair wears away at its point. Hairs vary in form and structure and consequently in appearance, giving such differences in pelage as the velvety fur of the mole, the long wavy coat of the skunk, the bristles of the pig, the spines of the porcupine, or the scale armor of pangolin and armadillo. AH of these are modifications of hairs, and it seems likely that claws, finger nails, and sheath horns are of similar structure. The purpose of the hairy coat is mainly protection from the weather; and those mammals (of cold climates) which have a close woolly under fur, usually have also an outer thatch of longer, coarser hairs to shed the rain. Hair makes a warm covering, not only because of the air with which it is filled, but because of the air entangled among it. Watch a muskrat swimming. You will see that his body is covered with gUsten- ing bubbles held between the under and outer fur, and that he comes out of the water with a perfectly dry skin. Thus hair not only keeps dampness and cold out, but the bodily heat in, as you well know who wear this covering at second-hand in the form of "furs"; and the coats of mammals vary in character and density not only with the climate in which they dwell, but with the season, the heavier winter coat loosening and falling out in the spring, but growing again in the autumn. A semiannual shedding of the hair is characteristic of most northern animals, at least, as is familiarly shown by horses and dogs. This quality of warmth in the hair is probably the secret of the supremacy attained by the mammahan race. Its beginnings were early in the Mesozoic or Secondary age of geologic history, when dry land was gradually rising out of the seas and swamps into extensive areas, and the climate of the world was slowly cooling.