86 CHILDHOOD OF ANIMALS 



cases where the adults are spotted or striped, the young are spotted 

 or striped ; I do not know of any case where a self-coloured young 

 acquires spots in the adult condition. On the other hand, some 

 at least of those which are unspotted in the adult condition, such 

 as the binturong, are spotted and blotched when they are young. 

 As the kittens of all these animals are born in holes, and are sedu- 

 lously guarded by the mothers, the existence of spotted young cannot 

 easily be explained as a special adaptation for protection, but is a 

 survival from some remote ancestral condition. 



In hyaenas, wolves, dogs and foxes, there is seldom much differ- 

 ence in pattern between the young and the adults, although the fur 

 is shorter and usually thicker, and spots are common on the under 

 parts. Some of the jackals have distinctive liveries, and in these the 

 cubs are more simply coloured. The black-backed jackal, for 

 instance, has the sides reddish, the legs and the upper part of the 

 tail yellowish-red, whilst the back and the end of the tail are black ; 

 but the cubs are nearly uniformly coloured, a dusky brown above 

 and yellowish- brown below. The canine animals vary a good deal in 

 their mode of moulting, but the northern forms have a fairly definite 

 autumn and spring moult. Arctic foxes, for instance, which are 

 white in winter, shed the greater part of the summer coat in a few 

 weeks, replacing it gradually by the thick white winter coat ; whilst 

 in early summer or spring of the following year they again shed the 

 winter coat and replace it by the thinner, dark summer pelage. I 

 do not know how soon the cubs of Arctic foxes become white ; I 

 should guess from analogy that it is not until the second winter, 

 as the puppy coat of most canine animals persists as the first 

 winter coat, and the moult takes place next spring, the puppy then 

 acquiring the usual characters of the adult. Nepal mastiffs in the 

 London Zoological Gardens moulted their under- fur early in spring. 



Young bears are extremely like the adults, and the puppy coat 

 appears to be retained as the first winter coat. The tropical bears, 

 such as the Himalayan, sloth and sun bears, change the hairs singly, 

 and have no thick under-fur. The polar bear sheds the thick under-fur 

 and a considerable portion of the whole coat in the water rather 

 early in spring, at least in the case of bears in captivity ; in autumn 

 much of the coat is shed singly hair by hair, but the chief change is 

 the growth of a thick under- fur. The brown bears and grizzlies 

 moult off the thick winter fur in masses early in spring. With 

 bears, like most of the wolves, dogs, foxes and jackals, there is no 

 striking difference between the patterns of the young and the adults. 



