no AFRICAN GAME ANIMALS 



other forces generally, although not universally, at work as 

 regards desert animals. If this is true, the habit of acting 

 so as to benefit by the coloration has become ingrained, 

 while no such habit has arisen, or has persisted, in the case 

 of the black and white chat, where the coloration is such 

 that no action would make it beneficial for concealing pur- 

 poses. The steinbok, on the other hand — although it does 

 not possess a concealing coloration — does not possess an 

 extreme and striking type of advertising coloration, and 

 in its case the habit of endeavoring to escape notice by 

 immobility, so wide-spread among living creatures, has per- 

 sisted, and, to judge by the fact that the species is common 

 over a wide range, has been successful as a survival factor. 

 Among the African carnivores we came across two or 

 three of the lesser species with a strikingly advertising 

 coloration; the ratel, for instance, and the white-tailed 

 mongoose, a highly predatory creature. What "warning'* 

 function this coloration can serve in these two cases it 

 would be hard to imagine. The black back of the black- 

 backed jackal is revealing; but the animal thrives as well 

 as its more concealingly colored kinsfolk. Most of the 

 smaller carnivores have colorations that if they do not 

 conceal at least do not reveal them. The hyenas include 

 three forms — a brown, a spotted, and a striped. Their 

 habits, their lack of enemies, and the circumstances under 

 which they make their rare attacks on living things make it 

 difficult to believe that they have special need of any one 

 of these three coloration patterns; doubtless the coloration 

 of no one of them serves any concealing or other useful pur- 

 pose to the animal at present; and it certainly seems as if 

 the three totally distinct patterns had been developed for 



