42 THE FOOD OF ANIMALS 



remarkable in appearance, having long hair and large bushy tail, 

 while it walks in a club-footed manner on the outer sides of the 

 hands and feet, which are provided with very powerful claws. 

 In its native state these are used as efficient tools for grubbing 

 among ant-hills and stirring up earth generally. The long narrow 

 snout is well suited for poking into holes and corners, but the 

 method adopted of catching insects is quite different from that 

 found in the hedgehog or shrew. Instead of possessing a close-set 

 array of small pointed teeth the jaws are absolutely toothless, but 

 this deficiency is more than compensated by the presence of a long 

 and exceedingly mobile tongue which, being kept constantly sticky 

 by means of the secretion of large salivary glands, acts like a piece 

 of the best fly-paper. 



The Cape Ant- Eater or Aard-vark (Oryderopus) is an animal 

 about the size of a small pig, which leads a largely subterranean 

 life in Cape Colony, coming out at night to feed. It has powerful 

 burrowing limbs, and, though possessed of teeth, its sticky tongue, 

 as in the preceding form, is the means by which ants and other 

 insects are captured (see vol. i, p. 137). The same device is found 

 in the related Scaly Ant- Eaters or Pangolins [Manis) of Africa 

 and South Asia, much smaller animals, which are largely arboreal, 

 and which are unique among Mammals in the fact that the body 

 is largely covered with overlapping horny scales (see vol. i, 

 p. 138). 



POUCHED MAMMALS (Marsupials) 



Descending a step lower in the mammalian class we come to 

 the Pouched Mammals, or Marsupials, of which the most familiar 

 example is the kangaroo, and which, with the exception of the 

 American Opossums and one other form (Coenolestes), are now 

 limited to Australia and some of the adjacent islands. The 

 Marsupials present an interesting example of a group of animals 

 which, having been long shut up in a large area presenting a 

 great variety of physical conditions, have, in the absence of more 

 highly organized competitors, become modified along various lines 

 to suit these various conditions. We thus find in Tasmania a 

 Native Wolf (Thylacinus), which, in its structure and habits, 

 resembles a member of the much higher group of Carnivora 

 (see fig. 312), while the Banded Ant -Eater [Myrmecobius) is 

 adapted for catching insects much in the same way as the Great 



