88 CHILDHOOD OF ANIMALS 



to differ little from that of the adult, except in the absence of specially 

 marked naajres and beards. All those that live in cold countries 

 assume a thick winter coat which they shed in spring, and the pattern 

 of this coat may be a little different, whilst its hairs are longer, 

 more closely set and rather woolly. The young animal begins to 

 assume the appearance of the adult in the spring after its first winter, 

 but usually moults once, a few weeks after it is born, replacing a 

 sparse puppy coat of rather long and silky hair by a thicker coat. 



Amongst cattle there is little difference between young and adults, 

 but the coat of the young is usually lighter and redder, and where the 

 adult has a strongly contrasting pattern of black above with white 

 under parts and white "stockings," this is less conspicuous in the 

 young, suggesting that the adult pelage is a later acquisition. Thus an 

 adult wild gayal bull has an almost black back, with white stockings ; 

 the calf is brownish- red with only the inner sides of the legs white, 

 whilst the young banteng is coloured like the young gayal, except 

 that it has a dark stripe along the back. In sheep, goats and 

 chamois the patterns of the young and the adults are almost identical, 

 although in some of the brightly patterned wild sheep, like the 

 mouflon, the young show almost no trace of the diversified coloration. 



The great family of antelopes show many conspicuous colour 

 patterns, and differences between the young and the adult are frequent. 

 The hartebeestes, bontebok and gnus live for the most part in open 

 plains, and except for counter-shading are usually self-coloured in 

 some yellow, brown or re dish shade, with various bands or blotches of 

 black and white, such as round the upper parts of the legs, on the 

 face or on the rump, which certainly have a ruptive effect — ^that is 

 to say, they break up the natural outline and obscure the contours, 

 when seen from a distance. The calves are much more uniformly 

 tinted, suggesting that, as in the cattle, the conspicuous patterns of 

 the adult are later acquisitions. The duikers, a family of antelopes 

 with very small horns, which haunt long grass and brushwood, have 

 a coloration ranging from pale mouse-colour to bright bay, whilst 

 many of them have broad dorsal bands or saddles of black or white or 

 yellow, and various face and head marks which have a secant, 

 outline-interrupting effect, and in these the young show the con- 

 spicuous pattern of the adult in a very faintly marked fashion, if 

 at all. There is one striking exception, however. The banded or 

 zebra duiker of Liberia (Fig. 23) has the tawny back marked with 

 bands of black arranged like the hoops of a barrel, and this pattern is 

 practically alike in the male, female and young. The klipspringer, 



