MR. RIDLEY'S OBSERVATIONS 



that implied by the fact that both belong to the great 

 order of Ungulata.- The tapir's " lights," in fact, tell 

 the same story as its bones. There is no ruminating 

 stomach, as in the Artiodactyle type, but instead a huge 

 caecum like that of the horse and rhinoceros. 



The dark hues of the American tapirs (there are about 

 four to five known species in Central and South America) 

 suit the dim forests in which they move. And 

 accordingly, one might think that the Old World tapir, 

 with its belly-band of white, would be on that very 

 account a conspicuous creature to marauding tigers. 

 This is, according to Mr. H. N. Ridley, not at all the 

 case. The innocuous tapir, with no means of defence 

 save its heels, and they for flight, trusts to its likeness 

 to grey and scattered boulders, frequent along the 

 streams of the Malay peninsula, which it haunts. 

 " When lying down in the day," observes Mr. Ridley, 

 " it exactly resembles a grey boulder." The blackness 

 of the tapir is a sign of maturity. The young animal, 

 as is so often the case among mammals (e.g. the deer, 

 the young of the puma, etc.) are flecked and striped 

 with white. Those who have observed young tapirs 

 wild, say that this spotting is an excellent preventative 

 of slaughter by carnivorous beasts. When quietly 

 lying down, the spots and stripes harmonize with 

 patches and dots of sunlight piercing the trees and 

 bushes of the forest lands which they prefer, and 

 readily deceive even the trained eye of the naturalist 

 or hunter. But of all such cases of supposed protection 

 by likeness to environment, one is compelled to suggest 

 that they depend for their probability, not only upon 

 tr e eye of man, who is at most only a recent foe of the 

 animal world, but of other creatures who have hunted 

 tapirs long before man was born into the world. In 

 this case, how is it that the sense of smell, which is 

 admittedly much keener among the majority of both 



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