THE STRUGGLE TO LIVE 



403 



member of this family in Madagascar has its sucking- 

 tube fourteen inches long, which enables it to reach to the 

 bottom of a great trumpet-shaped flower. Lions and tigers, 

 wolves, and the like which feed upon other live animals 

 must have specially developed legs and muscles for swift 

 running, or springing, or swimming. The otter can swim 

 and dive better than most fishes, and with his greater clever- 

 ness has little difficulty in 

 capturing the swiftest of them. 

 The eagle has great talons for 

 grasping its prey, and a strong 

 hooked beak for tearing it. 

 The pelican has a large pouch 

 or sac on its lower jaw which 

 it uses as a scoop-net for catch- 

 ing fish. The spoon-bill duck 

 takes up mouthfuls of mud 

 and water which it strains out 

 through a close fringe of small 

 thin plates at the sides. The 

 preying mantis (fig. 202) has 

 great spiny fore legs for seiz- 

 ing its prey, the unwary house- 

 flies, on the window-panes, 

 while the dragon-fly has a large 

 mouth which it can open very wide, and can engulf in this 

 fatal trap many tiny midges as it flies swiftly through their 

 dancing swarms. 



Special means for protection. — Some animals have 

 poison-fangs, like the rattlesnake and the ugly lizard of 

 the desert called Gila monster, and others stings, like the 

 scorpion, to kill their prey. These weapons are of course 

 also used in self-defense. The same is true also of numerous 

 other special means of food-getting, such as the power to 

 run swiftly, to leap, and swim. But there are in addition 



Fig. 202. A preying 

 (Natural size.) 



mantis. 



