BRITISH GUIANA (1) 113 
not born in holes in trees, cling to the mother and are carried like 
this from the time of birth. The male Three-toed Sloth can be 
distinguished by a short-haired blackish patch on his back, 
whereas the sexes of the Two-toed species are indistinguish- 
able, there not even being any visual signs of external sexual 
organs. 
An American who came to visit my menagerie at the Settlement 
was very intrigued by the slow-motion chameleon-like movements 
of my sloths, which caused him to remark, “It’s a wonder to me 
that they can get sufficient move-on to produce young.” Nature 1s 
very versatile in her mode of reproduction, but the fact remains 
that the sloth’s sluggishness is probably the main factor in its 
survival owing to primitive man’s instinctive fear of slow-moving 
creatures. 
To revert to swamp-dwelling mammals, the Brazilian Tapir 
is not uncommon throughout British Guiana in well-watered 
places, and has the distinction of being the largest local mammal. 
It belongs to the ungulates or hoofed animals, of which order 
there are only two other representatives in the country: deer and 
peccaries. With a body as big as a donkey’s, though much shorter 
in the leg, it is a formidable creature in the wild, but becomes 
delightfully tame in captivity and then seems to enjoy human 
company. The adults are more or less uniformly dark brown in 
color, whereas the youngsters are beautifully spotted and striped 
up to the age of about ten months, when their markings slowly 
disappear. During this period they are most attractive. Their faces 
are indeed quaint on account of the flexible proboscis or snout, 
which seems to be forever on the move when the animals are 
feeding—waggling about in all directions. This proboscis can be 
protruded or retracted at will, and its usefulness is observed when 
the tapir—which is a great leaf-eater—is tearing leaves from plants 
and bushes. The snout is then seen to bend over and press on the 
leaves as they are being torn off by the teeth. The proboscis of 
the young when being suckled is conveniently retracted. 
Tapirs were once widely distributed all over Europe, but are 
now confined to tropical America in the west and to Malaya and 
adjacent islands in the east. Although the adult animals of the 
two groups differ considerably from one another in coloration, the 
