Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 2, 2025
Buffaloes, leopards, tigers, antelopes, porcupines, the great ant-eater, divers species of monkeys, and numerous other animals are found, besides many varieties of birds. The native Africans inhabiting this territory are probably more than a million in number, and belong to several different stocks of somewhat varying characteristics.
It wheeled round with a snort, and went off crashing through the stout underwood as if it had been grass, leaving a broad track behind it. On another occasion he met with a formidable-looking but comparatively harmless animal, called the great ant-eater.
Like the Indian wild dogs, they live in communities using the burrows of the wild hog and ant-eater, as also the hollow ant-hills, for their lairs and breeding places.
February 2, 1909. Whenever I take my walks abroad I have the companionship of a couple of Irish terriers, enthusiastic hunters of all sorts of "vermin," from the jeering scrub fowl, which they never catch, to the slothful, spiny ant-eater, which they are counselled not to molest.
In short, so great a pest had the hyenas grown to be, that it became necessary to adopt some mode of destroying them. It was not easy to get a shot at them. During the day they were wary, and either hid themselves in caves of the cliff or in the burrows of the ant-eater.
When Martin discovered the great ant-eater, it was about to begin its supper; so he watched it. The plain was covered with ant-hills, somewhat pillar-like in shape. At the foot of one of these the animal made an attack, tearing up earth and sticks with its enormously strong claws, until it made a large hole in the hard materials, of which the hill was composed.
Even so, though Australia is still zoologically in the secondary period, it is a secondary period a good deal altered and adapted in detail to meet the wants of special situations. The oldest types of animals in Australia are the ornithorhynchus and the echidna, the 'beast with a bill, and the 'porcupine ant-eater' of popular natural history.
Numberless other curious creatures are roaming through the forest, or feeding on the banks; many others, having run their destined course, disappear from the face of the globe, to be replaced by a new creation of far less magnitude the mild llama, the savage jaguar, the nimble monkey with prehensile tail, the ant-eater, arborial and terrestrial; the diminutive sloth, thick-skinned tapir, alligators, turtles, and manatees; lizards, serpents; the beautiful denizens of the air with superb plumage, numerous species of humming-birds, gorgeous butterflies and beetles, vieing in their shining hues with the rich gems hidden within the bowels of the earth.
It lives among the trees, and feeds upon wasps, bees, and especially the larvae of both; but it does not use the tongue to any great extent. It is, on this account, an essentially different sort of animal. The little ant-eater is usually of a bright yellow colour, brownish on the back; but there are many varieties in this respect, and some are of a snowy whiteness.
But the "aard-vark" is just as good an ant-eater as he, can "crack" as thick-walled a house, can rake up and devour as many termites as any "ant-bear" in the length and breadth of the Amazon Valley. He has got, moreover, as "tall" a tail as the tamanoir, very nearly as long a snout, a mouth equally small, and a tongue as extensive and extensile.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking