Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: August 23, 2024
Their common prey is the capybara, so that it is generally said, where capybaras are numerous there is little danger from the jaguar. Falconer states that near the southern side of the mouth of the Plata there are many jaguars, and that they chiefly live on fish; this account I have heard repeated. On the Parana they have killed many wood-cutters, and have even entered vessels at night.
Pencroft and his two companions went to different parts of the bank, so as to cut off the retreat of the capybara, which the dog was looking for beneath the water. Herbert was not mistaken. In a few minutes the animal appeared on the surface of the water. Top was upon it in a bound, and kept it from plunging again.
The capybara is classed with the Cavidae or guinea-pig tribe. When not persecuted, it is very tame; but in the regions frequented by the jaguar it becomes his easy and constant prey. It is of a mild disposition, and is sometimes tamed. Its flesh is rather dry, and has a somewhat musky flavour, but affords wholesome food to man. Of agoutis there are several species.
Then, Neb helping him, the seaman arranged the spit, and the capybara, properly cleaned, was soon roasting like a suckling-pig before a clear, crackling fire. The Chimneys had again become more habitable, not only because the passages were warmed by the fire, but because the partitions of wood and mud had been re-established.
Often a capybara would stand or sit on its haunches in the water, with only its blunt, short-eared head above the surface, quite heedless of our presence. But if alarmed it would dive, for capybaras swim with equal facility on or below the surface; and if they wish to hide they rise gently among the rushes or water-lily leaves with only their nostrils exposed.
The relationship, though distant, between the Macrauchenia and the Guanaco, between the Toxodon and the Capybara, the closer relationship between the many extinct Edentata and the living sloths, ant-eaters, and armadillos, now so eminently characteristic of South American zoology, and the still closer relationship between the fossil and living species of Ctenomys and Hydrochaerus, are most interesting facts.
The relationship, though distant, between the Macrauchenia and the Guanaco, between the Toxodon and the Capybara, the closer relationship between the many extinct Edentata and the living sloths, ant-eaters, and armadillos, now so eminently characteristic of South American zoology, and the still closer relationship between the fossil and living species of Ctenomys and Hydrochaerus, are most interesting facts.
Can we believe that the Capybara has taken the food of the Toxodon, the Guanaco of the Macrauchenia, the existing small Edentata of their numerous gigantic prototypes? Certainly, no fact in the long history of the world is so startling as the wide and repeated exterminations of its inhabitants. Nevertheless, if we consider the subject under another point of view, it will appear less perplexing.
It is more easily tamed than the smaller species, and the fur is handsomer of black, white, and golden brown. The paca another rodent is remarkable for its enormously-developed cheek-bone, and for the thick pouch which it possesses. Like its big relation, the capybara, it always takes up its abode in the neighbourhood of water.
We ascend the lofty peaks of the Cordillera and we find an alpine species of bizcacha; we look to the waters, and we do not find the beaver or musk-rat, but the coypu and capybara, rodents of the American type. Innumerable other instances could be given.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking