Walter Kidd

In this chapter a few of the rarer examples of hair-clad mammals which present remarkable changes at critical areas of their hairy coats may be considered with advantage. I have chosen six, of which three appeared in my former book.

The Giraffe.

The two drawings of a giraffe, Figs.43 and 44 were made for me for the purpose of illustrating one of its habits and two of its peculiarities of arrangement of its hair. This stately creature is the tallest known animal and is the sole representative of its ancient family, more common in the days when giants abounded. Its range is becoming more limited and its enemies not less dangerous, and it is expected in the course of some years to add to the number of the recently-extinct creatures.

Habits.

Fig. 43.—Giraffe showing at A and B, hair-patterns of a remark­able kind at the place where the main move­ments of the neck occur.

Living mainly in dry sandy regions giraffes find their food exclusively in leaves plucked from trees, and are said by some authorities to exist for a long period without drinking, but an interesting account quoted by Lydekker from Selous should be mentioned here. Selous writes that on a certain occasion he reached camp “a little before sundown, just in time to see three tall, graceful giraffes issue from the forest a little distance beyond, and stalk across the intervening flat, swishing their long tails to and fro, on their way down to the water. It is a curious sight to watch these long-legged animals drinking, and one that I have had several opportunities of enjoying. Though their necks are long, they are not sufficiently so to enable them to reach the water without straddling their legs wide apart. In doing this, they sometimes place one foot in front, and the other as far back as possible, and then by a series of little jerks widen the distance between the two, until they succeed in getting their mouths down to the water; sometimes they sprawl their legs out sideways in a similar manner.” Lydekker adds that this position has to be assumed not only when drinking, but likewise when the animal desires to pick up a leaf from the ground or on the rare occasions when it grazes. This habit so graphically described is the one which alone concerns my subject. The patterns of hair peculiar to the giraffe need a short descrip­tion.

Hair Patterns.

Fig. 44.—Giraffe in the act of drink­ing or brows­ing off the ground.

Fig. 43 shows a whorl (B) at the side of the neck on a level with the prominent spines of the seventh cervical and first dorsal vertebrÆ. It lies exactly over a spot which may be well called a “critical area,” for an important hinge of the whole mechanism of the giraffe’s great neck is situated here. Though the remarkable length of its neck is intimately associated with its daily needs for protec­tion against enemies and the supply of food from high-placed branches of trees, it forms a real obstacle to the less important need of obtaining water to drink or food from the ground as Selous and Lydekker show. The protective value of the neck is picturesquely described by Mr. Beddard when he speaks of it as the giraffe’s watch-tower, whence its keen eyesight surveys the surrounding country for its enemies. But its attitude in drinking, Fig.44, gives a vivid idea of the play of forces which takes place at the great hinge between the neck and the trunk, and at this point the whorl has been produced on the skin in the course of its laborious efforts to supply itself with water. The absence of any other whorl or reversed hair on the whole of its neck and trunk is most significant from the point of view of the dynamics of hair.

The second departure from the normal direction of hair is found on the prominent portion of the spine, and it lies over this hinge-area. In Fig.44 is shown the mane proceeding along the whole of the neck in the normal downward direction, and the arrows indicate the way in which it becomes suddenly reversed at the critical point and the lowest portion of the mane stands up and points upwards. This change is shown by the two arrows whose points meet one another, and the facts of its occurrence, here and nowhere else, at once suggest that the habit which produced the whorl on the side of the neck has also contributed to the change in the direction of the mane. The pattern here is precisely of the same order as that of the cow’s neck which we saw to be caused by its habit of browsing off the ground.

Bongo—Tragelaphus euryceros.

Fig. 45.—Bongo. Showing on the strong mus­cu­lar chest, well-formed pec­toral pat­terns.

This West African antelope is a forest-dwelling species, about which little is known as to its habit of life, though its form and anatomy are well described by Lydekker. It has a powerful chest, long and strong horns, and short hoofs, and it is shown in Fig.45 with its large pectoral whorl, feathering and crest, in which it strongly resembles the domestic horse. One may be allowed here, as exact knowledge is wanting, to point out that “reconstruc­tion” of its habits may be reasonably attempted along the lines laid down in these pages. It is doubtful if any large mammal could possess so powerful a fore-end with very muscular forelimbs, highly-developed pectoral patterns and short strong hoofs without being a very fleet animal much accustomed to relying upon its speed for its protec­tion, and if a greater knowledge of it be obtained in the future it is highly probable that this predic­tion will be verified. Part of its habitat is described as the Ashkankolu Mountains, a region where speed would be of great value.

Kiang—Thibetan Wild Ass.

This member of the EquidÆ is shown in Fig.46 and there is an excellent specimen of it at South Kensington. I have chosen it because it is very unusual among others of its family in the possession of an inguinal and axillary whorl, feathering and crest. No other than the domestic horse that I have examined shows these patterns. They are nearly as well developed as in the horse, and require no special descrip­tion. It lives in high altitudes up to fourteen thousand feet, and travels often in large herds, its food being composed of the various woody plants of these dry and barren regions. Lydekker says that it “is remarkable for its fleetness and its capacity for getting over rough and stony ground at a great pace.” From these facts one can gather that a large portion of its working day would be spent in rapid locomo­tion from place to place in search of its sparse food-supplies and in avoiding enemies—two paramount objects of its existence which are pictured in the two animal pedometers displayed on its hairy coat.

Llama—L.

I refer here to the true llama or domesticated form of the genus Llama, of which the vicunha and huanaco are the existing wild species. In the stirring time when a handful of Spanish Conquistadores under Pizarro conquered and trampled upon the ancient civilisa­tion of the Incas this useful animal was employed to an immense extent as a beast of burden. Lydekker says that at the time of the Conquest of Peru it was estimated that three hundred thousand llamas were employed in the mines of Potosi alone. Prescott gives an excellent account of the use of this animal in his Conquest of Peru. They were valued highly for their strength and sureness of foot which were much needed in their long and rugged journeys over the great passes of the Cordilleras, as well as for the excellence of their flesh.

The only region of a llama’s body which is of interest in the present inquiry is the fore-foot, figured in Fig.47. It presents a very remarkable arrangement of hair on its under surface, just above the double hoof and spongy pad at the joint above the hoof. This is found on each side towards the outer border of the hollow region, and consists of a whorl from which the hairs radiate in a reversed direction towards the upper part and transversely across the rest of the hollow. Prescott speaks of “its spongy hoof, armed with a claw or pointed talon to enable it to secure hold on the ice,” and adds that “it never requires to be shod.” If one reflects upon the ceaseless action during rough and slippery locomo­tion of this animal throughout its working life on mountain passes, on rough stony paths and ice-covered places, one can have no doubt of the reason why this particular joint, so greatly used in maintaining a foothold, should have acquired on this sheltered portion of its hair an animal pedometer.

The Parti-coloured Bear—Æluropus Melanoleucus.

This is a rare and peculiar form of the family of UrsidÆ about which I made a statement some years ago at the Zoological Society of London. It is a “stocky” animal with a small head and broad short muzzle, a feature to which it has no right according to its affinities. It is not a member of the high-class FelidÆ whose special prerogative it is to wear their hair on a short broad muzzle in a downward direction as I showed in Chapter XI. Being a more bourgeois creature than a cat it has offended against such sumptuary laws as may exist in the animal kingdom.

Its hair ought to be worn in the proper backward or upward slope such as other bears, dogs and small carnivores display.

In my former note I modestly proposed an alternative sugges­tion to the one I now offer, of this aberrant and strange bit of hair-country, and this was that it was correlated with the broad short snout. As I have remarked before this word “correlated” is used so loosely as to mean almost anything the user likes, and it is, in my opinion, a fine source of confusion of thought. Undoubtedly this shape of the muzzle of the Parti-coloured Bear is linked somehow with the arrangement of its hair on that region. But it is hardly to be imagined that a direct reversal of hair from the proper bear-type, that is to say from the mouth to the head, would be produced by the mere broadening of the muzzle on account of some adapta­tion to its altering life. The link surely is of a different nature, and analogous to that of the corresponding surface in the lion and other cats, and that the cleaning of its fur on the snout is done in feline and not in ursine fashion, that is to say forwards, and that the breadth of muzzle is the reason for the change of method.

Two-Toed Sloth—CholÆpus didactylus.

This weird creature is one of a decaying family whom naturalists, with needless and frank brutality, called toothless. The term is neither exact nor polite. It is very much as if one were to call a person “toothless” whose front teeth had been knocked out, but whose remaining teeth were good and useful. But it represents so important a taxonomic character that one must allow for what seems bad manners on the part of zoological leaders who are, as a rule, full of the milk of human kindness, and seldom in these days quarrel even among themselves, adopting the motto nihil animalium alienum a me puto.

The sloths form an excellent example of the action of gravity upon long thick hairs, and the Fig.48 given will explain this. They are New World animals, though indeed they have what we call an “Old World” look, and are truly ancient. They spend the larger part of their time upside down in the manner represented in the drawings. They are arboreal and nocturnal animals that come down to earth in search of food when things are quieter below, and will wander for considerable distances, walking slowly on the outer borders of their feet and the feet turned in.

These being the few facts of their lives which concern the present subject one comes, as usual, to interpreta­tion. These tree-sloths are descended from an older form that inhabited the ground, so that the present mode of life, which is so largely arboreal, has been acquired by dint of long years of struggle and adapta­tion to bitter needs. It seems hardly reasonable to call in the aid of selection for the produc­tion of its singular disposi­tion of hair though that factor ruled in the produc­tion of its arboreal habit. It is almost flying in the face of common sense to attribute this upward, or downward (according to one’s point of view) singular arrangement to anything but the effects of gravity upon its long hairs. If it be not so, it looks a remarkable likely solution of this small problem.