To biologists the news of this capture was as exciting as would have been that of finding a living dinosaur. The coelacanths, in fact were hoary with age when the earliest dinosaurs appeared on earth. This fish was a survivor from days when animals first were developing spines and brains.
The specimen, however, was practically ruined before it came to the attention of the scientists. Native sailors had sliced it open from snout to tail. All the brain and other soft parts of the head were gone. Other parts were so badly mangled that it was impossible to reconstruct them.
Since then several others have been caught. An intriguing possibility is that of obtaining a female with unborn young. A developing embryo supposedly recapitulates ancestral forms. If one could be found it would be possible to reconstruct something of the real ancestry of the first back-boned animals.
Natives report that the coelacanth is extremely oily. Its flesh drips oil. When boiled it quickly turns to jelly. This fact may have a bearing on the origin of some of the earth’s great oil deposits. Man today may be running his automobiles or heating his homes on the fuel produced by vast hordes of these head-armored, hollow-spined fish in the ancient warm seas.
The Ever Faithful Hornbills
Lady hornbills are trusting wives and gentlemen hornbills are unbelievably faithful husbands.
The hornbills are birds with enormous beaks. They have the size of small turkeys and are usually found in pairs in the forests of East Africa. They are perhaps best known from the curious instinctive behavior of the female. Before laying her annual quota of two eggs she walls herself with mud, collected by the male, into a hole near the top of some high jungle tree. There one of the eggs—apparently seldom both—is hatched and the chick reared. The female continues this voluntary imprisonment for two months or more.
There is always a small aperture in the wall. Through this the foraging male passes food to his imprisoned mate, once an hour or less. Food consists mostly of fruits. Sometimes he brings her what apparently are playthings to relieve the monotony of hatching and chick-rearing.
A comprehensive report on the behavior of these grotesque birds in the Mpanga Research Forest of Uganda, by Dr. Lawrence Kilham of Bethesda, Maryland, is a classic on bird-watching.
Hornbills mate for life and apparently their conjugal life is a model of high morality for the whole animal kingdom. Walled into the tree-holes, the females obviously are helpless to protect themselves against any infidelity, and, sad to say, there are vampire female hornbills in the jungle whose only thought is to steal some imprisoned lady’s spouse.