LA. Ra 
= Y TU = y < 
) a ZA) — 
Gye! Sees Saree = UN = Sa “Se 
RE Folding GREAT ANTEATER. 
Showing abnormal direction of hair in fore-limbs. 
TRACES OF ANIMAL HABITS. 
By WALTER KIDD, M.D., F.Z.S. 
PART I. 
\7ORKS on Natural History must always find a place for the description of what 
is known by observation of the habits of animals. Among these the more 
notable and characteristic are dealt with. But there is a method of reading in simple 
hieroglyphs the less striking habits of animal life, and so to fill im much of the 
background of the picture, and that is by studying the arrangement of them hairy 
coverings. There is no attempt here to consider the qualities of thickness, texture, or 
coloration of the animal hair which so eminently make for the safety and comfort 
of different forms, but the arrangement, direction and disposition of that hai may be 
profitably studied, if in a humbler sphere. By the terms of the discussion we are 
restricted to such animals as Marsupials, Hdentates, Rodents, Carnivores, Unegulates, 
Insectivores, Bats and the Primates, including such as Marmosets, Lemurs, Monkeys, 
Anthropoid Apes, and not excluding Man himself. Most of the groups mentioned, 
when examined from our standpoint, ‘give themselves away” at once as creatures of 
simple habit and low life, and we can extract no varied interest from the records of 
their hair-story. The most interesting groups are Edentates, Carnivores, Ungulates, 
and some of the Primates. We can here only look at the evidence afforded by the 
hair-slope of a few individual forms of life as to their favourite attitudes of repose. 
We are thus chiefly concerned with the numerous hours of leisure enjoyed by those 
which we, restless unleisured creatures, call the lower animals. 
The individual hairs he at an acute angle with the skin except on the muzzle, 
the eyelids and eyebrows, the mane, and on parts of the external ears. In long ages 
back when hairy mammals were in the making, the primitive hair-slope can have been 
none other than an entirely simple uniform slope from head to tail, and from proximal 
to distal extremities of the limbs and base to tips of the ears. The body must have 
been elongated and the limbs short. The departures from this simple and original 
type of slope are numerous, and are proportioned to the complexity of the habits of 
the animals concerned. We are able by these new departures in style or fashions in 
hai to trace clearly some of the habits of animals, e.g., how they lie and how they 
sit, and even to calculate roughly the proportions of these two habits in individuals. 
A subsequent study will show also how we may gauge the active as contrasted with 
the passive life of certain animals. 
f 
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