76 FOOD 



upon leaves, young shoots and fruit, the juices of which 

 supply them with sufficient fluid, for they never drink. The 

 Tamandua ant-eater, from the same regions, is also arboreal. 



The mammals that live in the sea are the manatee and 

 dugong (Sirenia), the whales (Cetacea) and seals (Carni- 

 vora). The last two are carnivorous. Whales fall into two 

 great groups, whalebone "whales and toothed whales, the latter 

 including the dolphins and porpoises. The first group have 

 enormous mouths, from the top of which hang down plates 

 of whalebone fringed on the inner edge. These whalebone 

 plates may be as long as twelve or even thirteen feet. As 

 they swim through the water, innumerable floating organisms, 

 including large numbers of surface molluscs known as Ptero- 

 PODA, become entangled in the fringes, and these form the 

 food of this great marine monster. The spermaceti whale has 

 a hollow at the top of its skull, and its head is swollen out by 

 a huge mass of a fatty nature knoAvn as spermaceti. This 

 produces oil of a very rare quality which is necessary for 

 lubricating the parts of extremely fine machinery. No other 

 oil can replace it, and when whales become extinct, as they 

 threaten to do in the course of time, unless some substitute 

 can be found, fine machinery will be in a poor state. The 

 gigantic head of this whale so overweights its jaws that this 

 species is said, like the shark, to turn over on its back when 

 it wishes to attack its prey. Some toothed whales live largely 

 on cuttle-fish, which they find at the bottom of the sea. Many 

 of these gigantic molluscs are only known from portions that 

 have been vomited up by wounded w^hales, whose skin is 

 often scored half an inch deep by the powerful underhung 

 parrot-like beak of the cuttlefish. This sperm-whale has 

 frequently in its stomach concretions which are kno"vvn as 

 ambergris. They seem to be formed around the beaks of 

 cuttlefish. Ambergris is a substance of extreme value, for 

 though it has but little perfume of its own, it is used in fixing 

 and improving perfumes with w^hich it is mixed. 



Dolphins are sometimes extremely ferocious, attacking 

 seals, porpoises and even larger whales. The bodies of thirteen 

 porpoises and fourteen seals have been taken from the stomach 

 of a great killer- whale or grampus. These " wolves of the sea " 



