Chap. 37 



MAMMALS AND MANKIND 



767 



Fig. 37.16. African elephants, a group in the American Museum of Natural 

 History, New York. Mounted by Carl Akeley, one of his many examples of 

 taxidermy as a fine art. For a fuller appreciation of the work of Akeley and 

 that of others in the African Hall read Frontiers of Enchantment by W. R. 

 Leigh (Simon & Schuster, 1938) who was with Akeley in Africa and who painted 

 many of the backgrounds in the African Hall of the American Museum of Natural 

 History. (Courtesy, American Museum of Natural History, New York.) 



inch of its body. From such depths, it can return immediately to the surface. 

 Yet it shows no symptoms of the accumulation of nitrogen bubbles in the 

 veins which afflicts human divers who rise too quickly to the surface. Whales 

 can stay submerged an hour or more though they usually stay down only a 

 fraction of this time. They have varied equipments for this; one is the quality 

 of the hemoglobin of their blood which has a long hold on oxygen. The spout- 



FiG. 37.17. Sperm whale or cachelot {Physeter macrocephalus) . The head is a 

 third the length of the body which is about 65 feet. There are sharp clutching 

 teeth on the lower jaw but none on the upper. A great cavity in the expanded 

 snout holds about a ton of the highly valued oil from which vitamins are extracted 

 for use in margarine. Moby Dick was a sperm whale. (Courtesy, Rand: The 

 Chordates. Philadelphia, The Blakiston Co., 1950.) 



