Any animal who lives in the treetops is in danger of falling. The two-toed anteater hooks its long prehensile tail around a branch; thus anchored, it can dine at ease. When the sun rises, the two-toed anteater faces the problem of finding a shelter where it will be well concealed during the day. Sometimes it hides in a hole in a tree. If no hole is available it will look for a branch protected by foliage. It sleeps hanging down from the branch, holding on by its feet and tail, merging with its surroundings. It then looks like a tawny-coloured fruit. Its appearance and immobility while asleep help protect it from predators.

Two Toad Anteater Pictures

Modern breeds of cattle were developed from wild oxen. They were possibly first domesticated as beasts of burden, but the Egyptians were milking their cattle as long as five thousand years ago. Cattle were also sacrificed in early religious rites. The ancestor of many domestic breeds of cattle was the huge Bos p’rimigenius of Europe and North Africa.

They were large
—bulls stood seven feet tall at the shoulders
—and lived in wild herds. Primitive man drew pictures of them in caves in southern France and these pictures can still be seen today. The last herd of these wild cattle, found in Eastern Europe, apparently died out in the sixteenth century.

At Chilhingham Park in the Border country there is a herd of “wild cattle” which are supposed to be direct descendants of the Bos primigenius. Actually these cattle are probably domestic cattle that were permitted to return to the wild several centuries ago.

The humped cattle of India, also thought to be descended from the Bos primigenius, are important to the people of Asia. Certain bulls of this breed are regarded as sacred and are permitted to walk about the towns freely. Asians have also domesticated the yak and the water buffalo, two other members of the Bovidae family. In the wild the water buffalo is regarded as one of the most dangerous game animals.

Wild Oxen Pictures

At one time cheetahs lived in India and the rulers of Indian states often had a pair of these “hunting leopards” trained to bring down gazelles and other antelopes. The cheetahs were taken to the hunt on a cart. Their heads were hooded. When an antelope was sighted, the cheetahs’ heads were uncovered, and they were released. The cats would creep up on the game, and then with a sudden burst of speed, would overtake the frantic antelope and kill it.

Cheetahs are now rare in Asia. They are found mainly in Africa, where they are also becoming rare. As with other game animals, they have been over-hunted. These unusual cats weigh about one hundred pounds and, including their long tails, measure about seven feet in length.

They have long thin legs and the claws on their feet cannot be retracted into sheaths. In the wild they often hunt during the day unlike other members of the cat family which hunt mainly at night. In open country they sometimes watch for their prey from small hills. A pair usually hunt together. Cheetahs are tan or yellowish with black spots. Baby cheetahs are grey and do not have spots.

Cheetahs Pictures

They usually travel in small herds consisting of a male and several females with their young. Baby giraffes are five and a half feet high at birth, They nurse for about nine months, after which time they are tall enough to reach and eat leaves of trees.

Giraffes are vegetarians. Their favorite food is leaves and branches of the acacia trees which are plentiful on the African plains. Giraffes get moisture from leaves and can go for several weeks without drinking water. If water is available, though, they will drink. In order to get their heads down to the water they have to spread their front legs wide apart. They are very vulnerable to attack by lions when they are in this position. Lions are the only animals other than men that will kill a giraffe.

Giraffes are the tallest of all the animals, the males often reaching a height of eighteen or nineteen feet. It would be possible for a man of average height to stand upright between a giraffe’s front legs. The neck of a giraffe may be five to six feet long; although there are no more vertebrae in it than in the neck of a cow-the vertebrae are just longer. The giraffe can extend its tongue out as far as eighteen inches from its mouth, which enables it to reach leaves of trees with ease. There are several kinds of giraffes. Each has a different colour pattern and a different number of small horns on their heads. The reticulated giraffe of eastern Africa, for example, has large brown spots separated by narrow white lines. The blotched giraffe has paler spots separated by larger whitish lines. They come from different sections of Africa, Deep in the Congo jungle lives a small relative of the giraffe, the okapi. This animal was unknown to scientists until the beginning of this century. It is much smaller than the giraffe and has a short neck. Its fur is almost brownish purple and there are white stripes on its legs.

Some fifteen million years ago giraffes which looked much like okapis lived in Asia as well as in Africa.

Giraffes Pictures

Peccaries are rather small as pigs go. Their average adult length is about three feet and their weight between forty and forty-five pounds. The white-lipped peccary tends to be somewhat larger than the collared peccary.

One of the most unusual features of these pigs is a musk gland that is located on their backs a few inches from their very short tails. From this gland is secreted a liquid generally regarded as having an unpleasant odour. Apparently the peccaries use it in several ways: as a defence measure much as skunks use their scent; as a means of defining their territory by rubbing their backs against various trees and rocks in the vicinity of their home; aiid finally, as a signal they give to the rest of the peccaries that danger is present.
Peccaries are social animals and travel in small bands of from ten to forty. They sometimes even hunt in groups, and if one sights a rattlesnake or an ocelot—two special dangers—the others will surround the enemy and either help kill it, or at least put it to flight.

They feed early in the morning and late in the afternoon. During the day they rest in hidden spots, sometimes in a fallen log or in dens in the rocks. Although peccaries eat mainly vegetable foods, such as cacti, nuts, fruits, and roots which they dig out of the ground with their snouts, they will also eat small animals, snakes and the eggs of birds and turtles.
Their coarse hair is blackish-grey or grizzled. The collared peccary can be recognized by the white or yellowish hair around its neck; the white-lipped peccary has a white area on its face. The young pigs are yellowish or reddish-brown.

As far as is known, peccaries mate during any season of the year. The usual litter is two. The mother and her babies may appear together within a few days after birth, although at night they probably sleep in their nest in a den for some time. In a month or so they join their peccary band. The number of these wild pigs has decreased greatly in the past century. Their most formidable enemy has been man and his gun. In the southwestern part of United States, farmers killed the peccaries because they sometimes destroyed crops. In tropical forests and in the mountainous areas of Central and South America they are thought to be still plentiful.
Many tales have been told of the fierceness of peccaries when attacked. Actually they are rather shy creatures and would prefer to run rather than to fight. Their natural enemies are mainly the big cats— Jaguars, bobcats, and ocelots, although when they are in bands, they seem to be safe from these.The name “peccary” comes from one of the South American Indian languages and means “a creature which makes many paths in the woods.” Feccaries are also called javelina in Mexico. The wild pigs of the Old World differ from peccaries in several ways. Their tusks curve upward or outward instead of downward. They do not have musk glands on their backs as do the peccaries. They also have small outer hooves on their hind feet which the peccaries lack.

The wild boar of Europe and Asia is the biggest wild pig in the world. Adults may be as long as four and a half feet and weigh three hundred and fifty pounds. They travel in small bands and are usually found in forests.
Females have two litters a year with as many as six pigs in each litter. The young have dark stripes down their backs. Adults have a brownish-grey coat of bristles, although there is a great deal of colour variation among them, depending on the region or on the country in which they are found. Until fairly recent times a wild boar hunt was a popular though dangerous sport in Europe. The hunting party consisted of a pack of dogs and men on horseback. The boar was killed with spears or knives. The old English custom of killing a wild boar and serving its head at Christmas dinner dates back to pagan times when the boar was a sacrificial animal.

There are three wild pigs found in Africa, the bush pig, the forest hog, and the wart hog. The bush pig lives south of the Sahara and has tufts on its ears. The seldom-seen forest hog is found in deep forests of Central Africa. The wart hog, regarded by men as one of the ugliest of animals, lives on the African plains.

Piccaries Pictures

Tayras are related to weasels, martens, and mink. They look rather like these important fur-bearing animals, having the same type of long body and short legs. However the tayras are about three feet long— twice or three times the size of a weasel. Unlike the weasels of the north that change colour from brown to white with the coming of winter snows, the tayras have black fur throughout the year. Their heads are brown or light grey; their long tails are rather bushy.

Tayras can be seen in some zoos. They adjust reasonably well to life in a zoo environment, but thus far none have ever bred in captivity. Another member of the weasel family which lives in South America is the grison. It is smaller than the tayras and has grey fur. The grison also does most of its hunting at night and sleeps during the day. Tayras are now found only in Central and South America, but scientists think they may have originally been a North American species which gradually migrated south sometime during the past million years.

Tayras Pictures

During the day the wombat rests in its burrow. At night it comes out to hunt for its food. It eats only grasses, tree bark and roots. The wombat looks rather like an outsized guinea pig. It has only a tiny tail and short legs and its whole appearance is round. The average wombat is about three and a half feet long. Some may weigh as much as eighty pounds.

The wombat is a marsupial. The female has one baby at a time and the young wombat passes the first few months of its life safe in its mother’s pouch. There are two species of wombats in Australia. One has coarse greyish-black or yellowish-brown fur and a bare nose. The other has soft grey fur which extends over its nose.

At one time in the long distant past a wombat the size of a large bear lived in Australia. Scientists know this because they have found fossil remains of this wombat.

Wombat Pictures

There are two unusual mammals living in Tasmania which are not found anywhere else in the world. One is called the Tasmanian devil; the other is the Tasmanian wolf. They are marsupials, or pouched mammals, as are many of the Australian mammals. Unfortunately, so many of them were killed by the early settlers that they are rarely seen in their native home. The Tasmanian devil may have been called that by the people who first came to live on the island because the little animal’s fur is black with white spots. Or, it may possibly have been so named because of its angry expression when cornered.

The head and shoulders of the Tasmanian devil are proportionately larger than the rest of its body and are strong enough to enable the animal to kill creatures larger than itself. It has short legs, and walks with the same swinging gait that a bear does. It is about three feet long. The Tasmanian devil makes its home along rivers. It eats birds, lizards, snakes, frogs, rodents, and large insects. And, because it sometimes raided their chicken yards, it was often killed by farmers.

These animals mate in early spring and the young are born several months later. There are usually four babies which the mother carries about in her pouch. When they get too big to fit in the pouch, the mother builds a nest for them, in which they live until they are ready to go out on their own.  The Tasmanian devil generally hunts at night and sleeps during the day, often curled up in a hollow log. Its cries have been described as being whines and snarls.

The Tasmanian wolf, the other marsupial unique to this island, looks like a dog with brown stripes running across its back. It eats small mammals, even wallabies which are bigger than itself. Early settlers killed Tasmanian wolves in large numbers because these animals not only killed chickens but also sheep. Now the few remaining Tasmanian wolves live only in the wildest hill regions, if any still exist. They hunt at night and sleep during the day.

The female Tasmanian wolf has four yonng at a time. She carries them in her pouch until they are too big for it; then she hides them in a den. Her pouch, unlike the kangaroos’, opens to the back. Scientists believe that at one time both the Tasmanian devil and the Tasmanian wolf also lived on the continent of Australia along with the many other marsupial animals found there. Marsupials are considered to be among the more primitive of present-day mammals. Their young are in an early stage of development when they are born and must continue their further development within the mother’s pouch. Most other mammals give birth to young which are much more advanced in growth than the marsupial babies.

Tasmanian Devil Pictures