A DEGENERATE HY^NA 



developed a taste for the hen-roosts and the last stage 

 of the island was worse than the first. It is ever thus 

 when we attempt to interfere with the due course of 

 Nature. 



THE AARD WOLF 



The aard wolf, Proteles cristatus, is one of the scarcer 

 visitors to the Zoo, only two examples altogether having 

 been exhibited there. The animal is hyaena-like in 

 aspect, and is in fact a kind of weakened and slightly 

 degenerate hyaena. The huge teeth of the latter which 

 can crack a marrow bone as easily as a man will a nut, 

 are dwindled into tiny and inefficacious organs of 

 mastication. But it is striped like one species of hyaena, 

 and has a mane like that cowardly and yet ferocious 

 carnivore. The aard wolf, or " earth " wolf as the 

 phrase is to be translated, is a nocturnal creature that 

 lives in deserted or unappropriated dwellings of the aard 

 vark or earth pig, the " Edentate " Orycteropus. The 

 Swede Sparrman, who first gave a proper account of this 

 feeble relation of the hyaenas, called it " viverra," and as 

 a matter of fact, it has rather more affinities to the 

 Viverridae, or civet tribe, than have the hyaenas, though 

 the latter come nearer to that group of cat-like animals, 

 than to the cats proper. The ineffective teeth of the 

 hyaena-like Proteles are readily explained when its food 

 is taken into account. The stomachs of no less than 

 fifty individuals have been examined (it is hoped that the 

 creature is now on the " protected list "), and in all of 

 them nothing but termites (white " ants ") were found. 

 At the Zoo, a mixture of finely chopped meat and milk 

 and bread does duty, or rather did duty, in the case of 

 this animal and the ant-eaters, for the real article of diet. 

 It would seem, however, that Proteles has copied the 

 objectionable habit of the chacma baboon (see page 32), 

 and has taken to killing lambs for the sake of the curdled 



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