RHINOCEROSES, TAPIRS AND HORSES
Included by their general anatomy among the perissodactyls, although they have several toes on each foot, all reaching the ground, and, like those of elephants, connected by webs and clothed with thick, hooflike nails, are the rhinoceroses and tapirs. The rhinoceroses are relics of a long and interesting geological history. Two belong to Africa, one of which, the common "black," browsing rhinoceros, is still abundant south of the equator in all the more open and less occupied parts, of the continent; while the other, the larger, square-lipped, grass-eating, or "white" rhinoceros, has become very rare save in certain remote and upland plains. Both have thick, hairless skins of a pale lead-gray, which lie smoothly over the whole body, and both have, on the nose, two horns, composed of matted, whalebonelike hairs, not a part of the skeleton but springing from the skin. The front horn is always much the longer, in some cases reaching a length of more than fifty inches. Asia has three species of rhinoceros, all of which differ from the African in having functional incisor teeth, and in their hides. The best known is the "Indian" rhinoceros, now confined to the hot jungles of the extreme northeast of India. It has only one horn, and its dark hide is thrown into heavy folds looking like artificial armor. It became known to Europe early in the sixteenth century, and became the subject for some of the most curious speculations and superstitions of that credulous age. The "Sondaic" or hairy rhinoceros still is to be found in jungles from Bengal around to the end of the Malayan Peninsula. It is smaller than the Indian one, and its folded and tesselated hide supports a coat of short hair; its horns are only two little protuberances on its nose. Finally Sumatra and Borneo have a rhinoceros whose coat is still more hairy, and among whose peculiarities is the possession of two formidable horns. These creatures are perhaps the best examples remaining of what Merck's rhinoceros (fossil) and other big quadrupeds of the Pleistocene era looked like.
| Photo, Elwin R. Sanborn, N. Y. Zoological Society |
| WART HOG, ONE OF THE UGLIEST ANIMALS TO SEE |
| Photo, Elwin R. Sanborn, N. Y. Zoological Society |
| THE MALAY TAPIR, RELATED TO THE PIG AND THE RHINOCEROS |
The tapirs are even more widely separated in habitat than the rhinoceroses, for four species dwell in the New World between Guatemala and southern Brazil and Guiana, while the fifth belongs to Malaysia. They are forest animals, and mainly browsers, the long, almost trunklike nose and lips enabling them to seize and tear off leaves and twigs easily. They choose low districts, as a rule, and rush into the safety of water when in danger from the jaguar or other beasts. They are shaped somewhat like a very fat pony, but with a big, pointed head, and are clothed with short hair of plain dark tints, but the young are spotted at first. They are timid, secretive and nocturnal in their habits. Their flesh is excellent meat.
This brings us to the horses, whose geological history is one of the romances of natural history, as it is traced from the little five-toed eohippus of the Eocene up to the herds that roamed our western prairies, and disappeared so completely, and so unaccountably, in the era just preceding the present. Our domestic horses, consequently, are all of Old World origin. As far back as man can be traced in his supposed birthplace in central Asia herds of small horses fed upon those high plains; and about fifty years ago bands of ponies were discovered ranging the dreary deserts of Dzungaria, or northwestern Chinese Turkestan, and specimens are now living and breeding in the Zoölogical Park in New York and in European collections. This truly wild horse stands about ten hands high, and is covered with thick hair of a dull brown color, unstriped.
| MARKHOR, AN ASIATIC WILD GOAT |
| Photo, Elwin R. Sanborn, N. Y. Zoological Society |
| MOUNTAIN SHEEP OR BIGHORN OF THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS |
Such horses were undoubtedly hunted and killed as food by Paleolithic men; and when, many, many thousands of years ago, they had in some degree domesticated them, and began to migrate southward and westward, they took these horses with them. Those people that gradually occupied Persia, Mesopotamia, and the plains of Arabia and North Africa, developed them into riding animals that became perfected in what we know as the Arabian horse. Those tribes that migrated across Russia and along to the northern shore of the Mediterranean, found in Europe a similar, but more robust horse, now designated the "forest" horse, which the savages regarded as game. The two interbred in the course of time; but the southern breeds have remained smaller, lighter, and more agile, while the northern or forest stock has been the foundation of the heavy draft horses of northern Europe. After the Crusades Arab blood was introduced to effect a still further refinement of the horses of southern Europe, and it was from this Arab-improved stock, prevalent in Spain, that the horses sent to the Spanish colonies in the Americas were derived. Our plains, and the pampas of South America, soon became populated with these horses run wild—"mustangs," showing even yet traces of their aristocratic lineage.
| BROAD-NOSED RHINOCEROS |
| Merck's Rhinoceros—prehistoric. Drawn by Christman. (American Museum of Natural History) |
So near to the horses that they belong to the same genus (Equus) are the zebras, which differ mainly in their brighter coloring, less bushy tail, "roached" manes, and lack of those callosities called "chestnuts" on the hind legs. The zebras are exclusively African, and include two types, a southern and a northern. The true zebra, now extinct, except where kept and bred in captivity, belonged to the mountains near the Cape of Good Hope, was only about twelve hands high, and had black stripes on a white ground.
In the more open parts of Africa, north to Lake Rudolph, roamed Burchell's variety of this zebra, the one now commonly seen in menageries, in which the coat is creamy or golden yellow, and the black stripes are far broader. Its northern variety, Grevy's zebra, has the black stripes narrower, but so much more numerous that the white shows as mere lines between them. To these must be added an extinct species, killed off many years ago by Boer farmers and other sportsmen, which was known as the "quaha" (quagga) from its barking neigh; it was a dark brown, with stripings only on the head and neck.
The zebras seem incapable of becoming useful in harness or under the saddle, but their very near relatives, the asses—in spite of the sober gray of their dress, and their ungainly ears—have given us the patient and enduring donkey, which has been a servant of mankind, at least in Egypt, ever since the date of the earliest monuments; and wild asses still flourish on the deserts of Africa from Algiers to Somaliland. Another somewhat larger and more variable species roams the upland plains of Persia and northern India, while a variety, the "kiang," lives on the arctic tableland of Tibet, and is as untamable a creature as can be imagined.
| BURCHELL'S ZEBRA OF NORTHERN CENTRAL AFRICA |