CARNIVORA—CATS AND DOGS.
Five species of carnivorous animals (exclusive of menagerie specimens) have been introduced into New Zealand. Cats and dogs are domestic animals of which numerous individuals have gone wild from time to time; while ferrets, stoats, and weasels have been liberated and are now common.
One of the most characteristic features of the land carnivora is “the looseness of their skin, which, instead of being stretched on the body as tightly as a drum-parchment, as it is in grass-eaters—for instance, the ox or hippopotamus—is quite ‘baggy,’ having between it and the flesh of the beast a layer of the loosest possible fibres. It is for this reason that the skin of any but a very fat dog can be pinched up so readily, while of an herbivore it may be said, in the words of eulogy uttered by Mr. Squeers of his son Wackford, ‘Here’s firmness, here’s solidness! Why, you can hardly get up enough of him between your fingers and thumb to pinch him anywheres.’” As Parker says, “The use of this loose skin will be very evident to any one who will take the trouble to watch the great cats playing together at the Zoological Gardens. They are continually scratching one another, but the loose skin is dragged round by the claws, which in consequence can get no hold and do no harm; with a tight skin, on the other hand, the slightest scratch of such a claw as a tiger’s would cause a serious wound. The looseness of the skin is very evident in the puma and jaguar, in which it hangs in a fold along the middle of the belly, like a great dewlap.”
The skull is very strongly developed, and has great bony ridges for the attachment of the jaw-muscles. In herbivorous animals the brain-case is small and the face much prolonged; but in carnivores—especially cats—the face is very short relatively to the cranial portion of the skull. The higher carnivora cannot chew or grind their food; they only tear it and mince it. Cats and dogs walk on the toes, the under-surfaces of which are covered with soft leathery pads, so as to ensure a soft, silent footstep. What looks like the knee is really the wrist, and what looks like a backward-turned knee in the hind leg is the heel, the true elbow and knee being almost hidden by the skin. In all carnivores the canine teeth are relatively very large. All of them have the senses of sight and hearing very well developed. The young are always born in a comparatively helpless condition, and are generally blind for some time after their birth.