Evening star. [volume], May 24, 1936, Page 8, Image 86

About Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972

Image provided by: Library of Congress, Washington, DC

                
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