Bible animals

by J. G. Wood

The early writers, who were comparatively ignorant of natural history, thought that the Pelican lived chiefly on molluscs, and that, after digesting the animals, it rejected their shells, just as the owl and the hawk reject the bones, fur, and feathers of their prey. They thought that the Pelican was a bird of a hot temperament, and that the molluscs were quickly digested by the heat of the stomach: "conchas enim, calore ventris coctas, rursus evomit, ut testis rejectis, esculenta seligat."

At the present day, however, knowing as we do the habits of the Pelican, we find that, although the reasons just given are faulty, and that the Pelican lives essentially on fish, and not on molluscs, the derivation of the word is really a good one, and that those who gave the bird the name of Kaath, or the vomiter, were well acquainted with its habits.

The bird certainly does eat molluscs, but the principal part of its diet is composed of fish, which it catches dexterously by a sort of sidelong snatch of its enormous bill. The skin under the lower part of the beak is so modified that it can form, when distended, an enormous pouch, capable of holding a great quantity of fish, though, as long as it is not wanted, the pouch is so contracted into longitudinal folds as to be scarcely perceptible. When it has filled the pouch, it usually retires from the water, and flies to a retired spot, often many miles inland, where it can sit and digest at its ease the enormous meal which it has made.

As it often chooses its breeding-places in similar spots, far from the water, it has to carry the food with which it nourishes its young for many miles. For this purpose it is furnished, not only with the pouch which has been just mentioned, but with long, wide, and very powerful wings, often measuring from twelve to thirteen feet from tip to tip. No one, on looking at a Pelican as it waddles about or sits at rest, would imagine the gigantic dimensions of the wings, which seem, as the bird spreads them, to have almost as unlimited a power of expansion as the pouch.

In these two points the true Pelicans present a strong contrast to the cormorants, though birds closely allied. The cormorant has its home close by the sea, and therefore needs not to carry its food for any distance. Consequently, it needs no pouch, and has none. Neither does it require the great expanse of wing which is needful for the Pelican, that has to carry such a weight of fish through the air. Accordingly, the wings, though strong enough to enable the bird to carry for a short distance a single fish of somewhat large size, are comparatively short and closely feathered, and the flight of the cormorant possesses neither the grace nor the power which distinguishes that of the Pelican.

When the Pelican feeds its young, it does so by pressing its beak against its breast, so as to force out of it the enclosed fish. Now the tip of the beak is armed, like that of the cormorant, with a sharply-curved hook, only, in the case of the Pelican, the hook is of a bright scarlet colour, looking, when the bird presses the beak against the white feathers of the breast, like a large drop of blood. Hence arose the curious legend respecting the Pelican, which represented it as feeding its young with its own blood, and tearing open its breast with its hooked bill. We find that this legend is exemplified by the oft-recurring symbol of the "Pelican feeding its young" in ecclesiastical art, as an emblem of Divine love.

This is one of the many instances in which the inventive, poetical, inaccurate Oriental mind has seized some peculiarity of form, and based upon it a whole series of fabulous legends. As long as they restricted themselves to the appearance and habits of the animals with which they were familiarly acquainted, the old writers were curiously full, exact, and precise in their details. But as soon as they came to any creature of whose mode of life they were entirely or partially ignorant, they allowed their inventive faculties full scope, and put forward as zoological facts statements which were the mere creation of their own fancy. We have already seen several examples of this propensity, and shall find more as we proceed with the zoology of the Scriptures.

The fabulous legends of the Pelican are too numerous to be even mentioned, but there is one which deserves notice, because it is made the basis of an old Persian fable.

The writer of the legend evidently had some partial knowledge of the bird. He knew that it had a large pouch which could hold fish and water; that it had large and powerful wings; and that it was in the habit of flying far inland, either for the purpose of digesting its food or nourishing its young. Knowing that the Pelican is in the habit of choosing solitary spots in which it may bring up its young in safety, but not knowing the precise mode of its nesting, the writer in question has trusted to his imagination, and put forward his theories as facts.

Knowing that the bird dwells in "the wilderness," he has assumed that the wilderness in question is a sandy, arid desert, far from water, and consequently from vegetation. Such being the case, the nurture of the Pelican's young is evidently a difficult question. Being aquatic birds, the young must needs require water for drink and bathing, as well as fish for food; and, though a supply of both these necessaries could be brought in the ample pouches of the parents, they would be wasted unless some mode of storing were employed.