Hunters and Hunted 



that teeth are every whit as important as claws and scent 

 and hearing, but a discussion on the dental armament of 

 beasts in general would lead us beyond the depths to 

 which it is expedient to go in our pages. 



All the wild members of the cat family rely on the 

 same faculties as their domestic relative in their hunt for 

 prey, and they are aided in their work by their wonderful 

 colouring, which renders them wellnigh impossible to 

 detect in their native haunts. The tawny coat of the 

 lion harmonises beautifully with the desert sand he loves 

 so well ; the very brilliantly attired tiger is practically 

 invisible as he lurks amid the vegetation of the jungle ; 

 the leopard and jaguar are unconscious mimics of the 

 sun-flecked ground which carpets the tropical forests 

 which they haunt ; the lynx in hue matches the boles of 

 the forest trees amongst which he makes his home. 



Twixt the cats and dogs we must pause a moment to 

 give some thought to those ill-formed beasts, the hyaenas. 

 Their greyish hides dappled with black form the best 

 possible protection for such night prowlers as they are. 

 Their long fore and short hind legs, their clumsy gait 

 betoken a life spent neither in hunting like the dog nor 

 in springing on their prey like the cat. No, the hyaena 

 devours either carrion or attacks some animal already at 

 the point of death and therefore quite unable to defend 

 itself. Pluck is not one of the attributes of the hyaenas. 

 Their enormously powerful jaws serve them well in 

 devouring their prey and cracking their bones to splinters, 

 and their extraordinarily keen sense of smell enables 

 them to detect carrion at enormous distances. 



Some dogs, of which wolves and jackals may be taken 

 as typical examples, hunt their prey in packs ; their sense 

 of smell is acute and their sight hardly less so. But it is 

 not dogs only which hunt in packs. All animals become 

 bolder in the company of their fellows. We can see it in 

 our own country-side : sparrows will often band together 

 in the face of some common enemy, in the shape of an 



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