Den (animal)

“ My First Experiment was as follows:—I procured a skin of our common deer, entire to the hoofs, and stuffed it carefully with dried grass until filled rather above the natural size,— suffered the whole to become perfectly dry, and as hard as leather,—took it to the middle of a large open field,—laid it down on its back with the legs up and apart, as if the animal was dead and putrid. I then retired about a hundred yards, and in the lapse of some minutes, a Vulture, coursing round the field tolerably high, espied the skin, sailed directly towards it, and alighted within a few yards of it. ”

“ Fig. 7.—Opening Cuts at Back of Prong-horn Antelope's Head.
The Legs.—If the specimen is of medium size, e.g., not larger than a deer, disjoint the legs at shoulder and hip, and leave all the leg bones attached to the skin, just as with small mammals; but, of course, cutting off the flesh and tendons carefully. If the animal is larger than a deer, the skin would be too heavy and cumbersome to handle if all the leg bones were left attached to it. ”

“ Making the Body of a Manikin.—The centre board of a large [148] mammal, like the bison, moose, and all such animals, should accurately represent a section through the centre of the body from top to bottom. In the absence of measurements and living models, the closest approximation to the desired form is obtained by laying the skin upon the floor, hair inside, and folding it loosely upon itself so as to get what looks like the general shape of the animal, and then taking the outline thus obtained. ”

“ As the deer or antelope treads on the snare, the foot passes easily through the elastic spikes, but, when the foot is raised, the spikes run into the joint and hold the hoop upon the limb. Terrified by the check and the sudden pang, the animal tries to run away, but, by the united influence of sharp spikes and the heavy log, it is soon forced to halt, and so becomes an easy prey to its pursuers. ”

“ The bones of the deer and birds outnumber those of all the other kinds. The condition in which they are found bears a striking resemblance to that of the bones from the shell-heaps of Scotland, the Orkneys, and Denmark. Nearly all the fragments from the deer were those of the long bones, which in the living animal are either covered by the largest amount of flesh, or contain the most marrow. ”

“ If food were sought on the bottom by means of sight, the animal would probably swim dorsal side up, for by canting from side to side it could see the bottom just as easily as though it were ventral side up, and at the same time it would be in position to drop quickly on the prey. ”

“ HEAD OF BOA.
In the Serpents, the four limbs which we have seen gradually to become obsolete in the latest forms of the Saurian group, are no longer found, either in external projections or in internal bones; there is neither breast-bone, nor pelvis, nor shoulder. In one Family, however, there are two horny spurs or hooks on the hinder part of the body, which are connected with minute bones imbedded in the flesh, and seem to be the rudimentary representatives of posterior limbs; they are, however, of no use in progression, but answer another purpose in the animal’s economy. ”

“ Remarkably for its large head, nude, scaly extremities, and extremely short, nude, scaly tail. "The structure of the ear, limbs and tail has special reference to a burrowing animal—the ear being valvular, so that it may be effectually closed against the entrance of foreign substances, and the feet devoid of hair, but scaly, and the tail reduced to very small dimensions. The eye is also excessively small, and buried deep in the dense silky fur. The hind feet, contrary to what is almost invariably the case in burrowing mammals, are larger than the fore feet."—Anderson. ”

“ The skin ready to be cast yields round the snake's mouth only, and remains adherent to the extremity of the tail. As the animal advances, the caudal extremity of the skin is inverted—that is, pulled inward—and so the process goes on, and is completed by the tail passing through the mouth of the skin; and thus the direction of the abandoned skin is directly opposite to the direction taken by the skin-casting snake—that is, if the mouth of the skin lies east, the snake went out to the west. ”

“ The animal's legs, tail, and neck are now skinned precisely as those of a mammal would be, with the exception that each of these members is detached from the body and pulled inward in order to turn the skin wrong side out. Of course all flesh is to be removed from the animal, precisely as with a mammal, and unless the skeleton is to be preserved, the shoulder girdles and pelvis may be cut out with the flesh and thrown away. ”

“ How still the woods seem from here, yet how lively a stir the hidden animals are making; digging, gnawing, biting, eyes shining, at work and play, getting food, rearing young, roving through the underbrush, climbing the rocks, wading solitary marshes, tracing the banks of the lakes and streams! Insect swarms are dancing in the sunbeams, burrowing in the ground, diving, swimming,—a cloud of witnesses telling Nature’s joy. ”

“ If, for instance, a rat has undergone this process, one may recognise in the dry and shapeless mass, the place occupied by the muzzle of the animal, the long whiskers of its cheeks, the down which covered the delicate cartilages of its ears, the hairs of various lengths and colours which correspond with those of the back, the belly, and above all, the tail ”

“ A deer's shoulder is not attached to the skeleton at all; it lies loosely inside the skin, with only a bit of delicate elastic tissue joining it to the muscles of the body. When a deer was headed suddenly and braced himself in his tracks, the body would lunge forward till the fore legs seemed hung almost in the middle of his belly. ”

“ Fishes, Reptiles, Birds and Mammals, all agree in this, that they have a special clothing of the skin—scales, feathers and fur, respectively. These three kinds of structure, although so widely differing in appearance, are practically formed all in the same way, viz., by alternate ingrowths and outgrowths of the skin; the ingrowth forming the root of the scale, hair or feather, and the outgrowth its projecting part. If these infoldings and outgrowths of the skin could be straightened out into a plane surface, the skin of a small vertebrate would cover an enormous area. ”

“ The long neck would enable the animal, however, to wade to a considerable depth, and it might forage for food either in the branches or the tops of trees, or more probably, among the soft succulent water-plants of the bottom. ”

“ It will, for example, dash at the face of a perpendicular precipice that looks as smooth as a brick wall, for the purpose of reaching a tiny ledge which is hardly perceptible, and which is some fifteen feet or so above the spot whence the animal sprang. Its eye, however, has marked certain little cracks and projections on the face of the rock, and as the animal makes its leap, it takes these little points of vantage in rapid succession, just touching them as it passes upwards, and by the slight stroke of its foot keeping up the original impulse of its leap. ”

“ The eyelids encase the organ, except for a minute opening, looking like a small ink-spot at the blunted apex of the cone. The animal catches the insects on which it feeds by darting on to them its long elastic tongue and slinging them back into the mouth, glued to its sticky tip. ”

“ If you should come across a no longer needed skull of the Deer, take the opportunity for examining its dental arrangements. You are, of course, more likely to meet with it in a museum than in your rambles. You will find the teeth and their disposition do not differ materially from what are found in the jaws of the ox and the sheep; for like those the Deer is a ruminant, living on vegetable food and having a four-chambered stomach. There are no teeth in the forepart of the upper jaw, the three premolars and three molars of each side being placed well back in the cheek. ”

“ You look for a bird's nest, the young ones have gone, but you find their bed occupied by one of these beautiful creatures, which will coil up its body of two feet in length within a space no larger than the hollow of your hand. They appear to be always watchful; for at the instant you discover one, the quick playing of the long, black, forked tongue will show you that you too are observed. On perceiving the slightest sign of your intention to disturb it, the snake will dart upwards through the branches and over the leaves which scarcely appear to bend beneath the weight. ”

“ The robust form of the jaws in these animals, their trenchant and frequently notched or toothed edges, the mode in which the lower mandible shuts into the upper, and the great strength of the muscles which move them, manifested in the force with which they snap together,—while they remind the beholder of the beak of a bird of prey, yet constitute an instrument of far greater power, and seem to intimate that it must be something more than grass that requires an apparatus so formidable. ”

“ But in all,—whether mammals, birds, or undegraded reptiles,—they are so placed, that the creatures possess necks, of greater or less length, as an essential portion of their general type. The hinder limbs have also in all these three divisions of the animal kingdom their typical place. ”

“ The above features are highly important, and will always prove quite sufficient to enable us to decide whether any particular animal is a vertebrate or an invertebrate, for it will be remembered that the body of the latter has only one cavity, containing the nervous system as well as the viscera, and that the nervous system is commonly placed along the ventral side, but never along the dorsal. ”

“ To enable the claws of a carnivorous animal to seize its prey, a considerable degree of mobility is necessary in their paws and toes, and a considerable strength in the claws themselves. From these circumstances, there necessarily result certain determinate forms in all the bones of their paws, and in the distribution of the muscles and tendons by which they are moved. ”

“ Of these shorter axes, one connects the dorsal and ventral surfaces, while the other connects the lateral (right and left) surfaces, and these two axes may be, and generally are, unequal. All worms, insects, mollusks, fishes, birds, reptiles, and beasts, are examples of creatures with bilateral symmetry. The dorsal and ventral aspects of the body generally differ in correspondence with the different relations to surrounding conditions which they usually bear, as notably in snakes and creatures which glide with their bellies applied to the surface of the ground. ”

“ The most striking characteristic of the animal, and that from which it takes its name, consists in the large cheek pouches which hang from each side of the mouth and extend back to to shoulders. They are used as receptacles of food which the animal hurriedly gathers when above ground, afterward returning to its burrow to enjoy its feast at its leisure. ”

“ I have many times seen the Common Tern suddenly fly up and come close over a man or a dog, without the least apparent provocation, indeed when far distant from its nest, and then pass and repass repeatedly within a few yards, emitting a plaintive cry, as if its eggs or young were in the immediate vicinity. At other times, when the birds were yet distant from their young, and carrying fish in their bills, they would, on seeing a man, round to, drop their food, and perform the same evolutions. ”

“ The points firmly set in the skin of another animal, the spines can be withdrawn only with considerable effort, and if left will gradually work deeper and may traverse a considerable part of the victim’s body before finally becoming encysted. ”

“ In other respects they are warm-blooded, viviparous mammals, destitute of hinder limbs, and with very short fore-limbs completely enclosed in skin, but having the usual number of bones, though very much shortened, forming a kind of fin. The fin on the back is horizontal, and not rayed and upright like that of a fish; the tail resembles that of a fish in form, the caudal vertebræ running through the middle of it. The immense muscular power of this tail, with its broad flanges, arises from the flesh of the body, terminating in long cords of tendon, running to the tip. ”

“ Where the dentition of a mammiferous animal is strictly carnivorous, this structure is obviously incompatible with a foot incased in a hoof:—but where the teeth are adapted for triturating vegetable substances the case is different. ”

“ Nevertheless the student of development finds, not only that the chick commences its existence as an egg, primarily identical, in all essential respects, with that of the Dog, but that the yelk of this egg undergoes division—that the primitive groove arises, and that the contiguous parts of the germ are fashioned, by precisely similar methods, into a young chick, which, at one stage of its existence, is so like the nascent Dog, that ordinary inspection would hardly distinguish the two.
The history of the development of any other vertebrate animal, Lizard, Snake, Frog, or Fish, tells the same story. ”

“ But some snakes have hundreds of these vertebræ. The boas, for example, have no less than three hundred and four!
In the next place, remember that all these vertebræ are fastened together by what we call ball-and-socket joints. That is, there is a round knob at the back of each vertebra which fits into a socket in front of the vertebra behind it. This gives to the spine of a snake great strength, for a vertebra cannot be forced out of its place without breaking the vertebra behind it. And it also allows the spine to be curled and twisted about in almost any direction ”