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EIRTURE ! Beats the FABLES Can a snake swallow a whole egg five times as large as its head ? Yes! And many other things that animals actually do are more fantastic than the mythical stories told about them by William Bridges Curator of Publications, Now York Zoological Park FACT: A FOX CARRIES ITS KILL IN ITS MOUTH, NOT SLUNG OVER ITS SHOULDER FABLE: A SQUIRREL AFLOAT Some weeks ago a man called at the office of Dr. Raymond L. Ditmars in the New York Zoological Park to offer what he felt was convincing eyewitness testimony on the long-debated subject of a snake swallowing its young to protect them in times of danger. He was a reasonable, thoughtful man and the Curator of Mammals and Reptiles had comparatively little difficulty in convincing him that his eyes and the slightness of his knowledge of snake habits had betrayed him. And then Dr. Ditmars invited him to take a stroll through the Reptile House and inspect the collection at feeding time. The Doctor and his guest stopped before a cage that contained a diminutive brown snake two feet long —no larger than one’s little finger and curiously formed, having a head scarcely any larger than its body. Keeper Taggart came along just then, slid the glass panel aside and laid a bantam egg down beside the snake. “But isn’t he going to break the egg? the visitor inquired. “Your label says that's an African egg-eating snake; but don't you have to break the shell for it?” “Watch it a minute," said Dr. Ditmars. The tiny serpent turned and approached the egg. In comparison to the size of the snake's head, the egg seemed enormous fully five times its diameter. And then, as they watched, the tiny jaws opened and seized a fraction of the egg: slowly, sixteenth of an inch by sixteenth, the jaws worked forward with much squirming and straining. The skin of the head and jaws stretched — stretched again — stretched pa per-thin and seemingly almost to the bursting point as the egg was engulfed. Within ten minutes the egg was out of sight, although a terrific bulge in the creature’s throat showed very' clearly where it was. The serpent seemed to be in pain; its taut throat muscles worked spasmodically. And then sud denly the bulge subsided, and presently the snake ejected the pieces of shell through its mouth — crushed and flattened strips that had been cut cleanly and sharply through by the tiny saws in the snake's throat. « The visitor was goggle-eyed. ‘‘Well!" he said. "Well! After this I’ll believe anything about snakes. You’re not going to tell me I didn’t see that snake swallow an egg five times its own size, are you?” Dr. Ditmars laughed. “You saw it. all right. But I meant that as an object lesson to you — that you don’t have to believe impossible things about animals, because the things they actually do are amazing enough.” The trouble with animals is that they do so many fantastic things — actually and demon strably do them — that many people don’t know where to draw the line between scien tific truth and natural history myth. If one snake can swallow an object five times the size of its head, what's to prevent another snake from swallowing its own young? ©r, if naturalists can assert that a certain frog’s eggs hatch tadpoles which become ten inches long and then, instead of "growing up” to be big frogs, actually shrink to adults less than two inches long, what's so impossible about a horsehair turning into a snake? A farm boy leads his horses to the watering trough daily. In a lit of scientific curiosity he plucks out a hair from old Charlie's tail and drops it in the trough. Next day he discovers an animated and very much alive horsehair snake in the water, the same color and ap proximately the same size as the hair. Well? You put in a hair and you draw out a hair snake. What is better proof ' Better proof can be had in the laboratory. The “snake” is not a snake at all; it is the adult form of an insect parasite. In its larval stage it may have lived in the internal organs of a grasshopper.This, perhaps, fell into the water ing trough, where the adult stage developed. There are, it appears, more myths and superstitions about snakes than about any other group of animals. But the popular be liefs about other creatures are usually just as improbable to the naturalist. Some people will tell you, for instance, that a wound in a camel’s flesh will never heal. In fact, it is asserted that in the East, the camel drivers sew patches of cloth or leather on the hides of their beasts to cover open wounds The basis of that yam may be the practice of resoling the feet of camels that have cut themselves in crossing rocky ground. A camel s foot is something like a tough leather cushion. When the skin is accidentally opened, camel drivers can effect a temporary repair by whip ping a leather sole onto the insensitive edges of the cushion. But certainly there is no reason to believe that ordinary wounds in the hide of the body will not heal. The Zoological Bark's camels have occasionally injured themselves and the wounds have invariably healed naturally. It is an ancient belief that travelers in the desert, when about to perish from thirst, have saved themselves by shooting their camels and drinking the water stored in the creatures’ stomachs. Well — a man would indeed have to be near death from thirst to attempt drink ing water that has been sloshing around in a camel’s stomach for several days. After he drank it he would probably die anyway. A thirsty camel can put away fifteen or twenty gallons of water at a time, but after he has taken it in, it is not good for anything much but the camel's own needs. There are several myths about animals that are puzzling because it is hard to understand how they began. The ordinary myth, of course, is generally based on jxx>r observation or an incomplete knowl edge of a specific animal 's structure or habits. But what about the story that when a fox has stolen a goose, he goes off carrying it slung over his shoulder? That it is a myth there can be no doubt. My guess is that the origin of that story is purely literary. The fox was a favorite character in the medieval beast epic and the stories have been illustrated innumerable times. In cer tain illustrations the goose is being car ried in this way, and almost certainly that is the origin of the story. Another story that may have had much the same kind of origin is the one about squirrels crossing streams by em barking on chips and raising their tails as sails. Drawings of that style of trans portation exist —I remember having seen them in a children's book; but the artist perhaps imagined it, and the belief took root from the drawings. In recent years there have been especially heavy migrations of squirrels and plenty of people have had opportunities to observe that squirrels cross rivers very much the same as any other animal by swimming. That the handling of toads is sure to be productive of warts is a familiar fancy of child hood. In that case, the myth no doubt arises from a superficial resemblance between the tubercles in a toad's skin and the juvenile affliction known as warts. Toads do, of course, carry a secretion that can be highly unpleasant" to the taste, as many an unwary dog has found; but there is not the slightest connec tion between that secretion and warts. (Continued on poffo 13) RIGHT: HERE IS PROOF OF THE SNAKE-EATS- ^ EGG STORY Photo © by Hutchinton A Co., Ltd. LEFT: WHAT REALLY TOOK PLACE WHEN ^ A SNAKE •SWALLOWED" ITS YOUNG Illuttrationi by Jack Murray