THE LIFE OF MAMMALS 
their chief diet, and nesting in their hollows. The larger ones 
kill eagerly such birds and mice as they can catch; and all 
make pretty pets. Besides these several other species behave 
like shrews, living wholly on the ground; and one of the larger 
desert kinds (Antechinus), whose principal enemies are hawks 
and owls, carries the similitude farther by leaping when it moves 
just like the true jumping-shrews of the deserts of North Africa. 
BANDED AUSTRALIAN ANT-EATER, 
There seems no end to the way in which circumstances have 
produced in these Australian marsupials forms and aptitudes 
like those of the placental mammals clsewhere exposed to 
similar conditions of soil, climate, etc. 
Another example is found in the last of this family, the 
banded ant-eater, which has the general look of a large 
ee reddish squirrel irregularly banded with white 
ee across the back, digs open ant-hills, and then licks 
up their denizens by means of a long glutinous 
tongue — an adaptation in structure like that of the true ant- 
eaters, just as their needs and pursuits agree. Its habits other- 
wise are little known, for it is rare and local. Another inter- 
esting fact about this animal is that its teeth, which are very 
small and delicate, though numerous (54), are unlike those 
of any other marsupial, and exhibit (as also does the palate) 
suggestive points of resemblance to the dentition of the mono- 
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