84 ] Animals in the Wild 



baby mammal is always nourished by milk furnished by its mother. 

 Opportunities to observe wild mammal life at first hand are much 

 less common than those for bird study. At an early age children 

 become familiar, to be sure, with a variety of beasts in their story 

 books the bears in "Goldilocks," the wolf in "Red Riding Hood," 

 the fox in "Chicken Little" but this acquaintance is based on 

 fantasy rather than facts. When the youngster begins to grow 

 away from his make-believe world and shows an interest in animals 

 as they really are, he has considerable misinformation to discard 

 as well as facts to learn. 



Many Kinds of Mammals 



A useful way to simplify the story of the mammals for an older 

 child is to group these animals into their main divisions. 



One group consists of flesh-eating ("carnivorous") mammals, 

 such as wolves, foxes, lions, and tigers. A second group is made 

 up of rodents mice, squirrels, beavers and others with long, sharp 

 front teeth. The third group, the hoofed animals, includes deer 

 and cattle. 



Strange water mammals known as manatees and dugongs are 

 in a class by themselves so are the flying mammals we call bats. 

 Whales are probably the best known of the group known as 

 "cetaceans." 



All toothless mammals such as the anteater are included in one 

 group. Finally there are the marsupials, made up chiefly of 

 mammals with pouches in which to carry their babies. The 

 opossum is the one American representative of this group, but the 

 kangaroo of Australia is perhaps the most widely known of the 

 pouched animals. 



Flesh Eaters and Plant Eaters 



On the basis of their food habits mammals may be divided into 

 two general classes. There are plant eaters (herbivores) and flesh 

 eaters (carnivores) . In trying to distinguish one type from the 

 other, a child would pretty much take for granted that the flesh 

 eaters are larger and stronger. But that is not always the case. 



