The southernmost birds on earth—the only higher animal except man and his dogs that go close to the South Pole—are the Antarctic skuas. They are fierce, brutal little killers. Dwellers in the earth’s most inhospitable habitat, they have been able to survive largely because of their extreme rapaciousness.
All other Antarctic birds, such as the penguins, stay close to the shore of the desolate continent. The skua has been seen at least 300 miles inland, and occasionally may fly across the pole itself.
These birds arrive on the coast of Antarctica about the middle of October, the beginning of the southern summer, after spending the winter north of the circle. Their arrival is timed to coincide with the egg-laying of the Adelie penguins. The skua’s chief food consists of penguin eggs and chicks which it devours by the hundreds. Scores of half-eaten, trampled bodies of young penguins always can be found during the hatching season near the sites of penguin rookeries. The skua is hardly a match for the parent birds but is expert in separating chicks from the brood and killing them when they have no protection. It is a creature of relatively enormous strength and endurance and flies long distances carrying chunks of meat bigger than itself. It also is an extremely noisy, quarrelsome creature—an outstanding example of the philosophy of every individual for itself. There is no brooding of chicks nor protecting them from the elements. The parents hardly bother to feed them.
Little skuas, it is reported, come out of the eggs fighting. Usually there are two eggs to a nest. One chick probably is a trifle weaker than the other. In a short time it is driven from the nest, killed and eaten by its rapacious brother or sister. It may even become the prey of its own hungry parents. Skuas also have the habit of eating their own eggs. This keeps the population within the limits of the food supply.
Silk-Bearded Clams
Jason’s golden fleece may have been woven from the beard of a silk-bearded clam. The same sort of cloth, in fact, still is produced on a small scale in Italy, chiefly for the tourist trade. A silk glove of modern manufacture now is in the Smithsonian collections.
The clam is a giant Mediterranean species, the pinna marina. Its shell reaches a maximum length of about three feet, but the average is less than half this. From a gland in its “foot” it secretes milk-like strands with which it attaches itself to the sea bottom. These strands are as much as a foot long.
The silk is of exceptionally fine quality—at least it was so regarded by the Arabs who maintained centers for manufacture of the cloth in Spain, Italy and North Africa. Says one Arab author: “At a certain time of the year an animal comes forth from the sea and rubs itself on the stones of the seashore. A down soft as silk with a golden color falls off it. It is fine and small and garments are woven from it which take on different colors during the day. The Umayyad kings (of Spain) used to put restrictions upon it so that it was only exported secretly. The price of a garment is more than 100 dinars, on account of its fineness and beauty.”
The value of a dinar—the gold coin of the Moslem world—is difficult to calculate in any present coinage, but it was at least the equivalent of a dollar.
Says another Arab writer: “I have seen how it is gathered. Divers dive into the sea and bring out tubers like onions with a kind of neck which has hairs on the upper part. The tubers like onions burst and let forth hairs which are combed and become like wool. They spin it and make a woof of it so as to pass a warp of silk through it. The most magnificent royal garments of Tunis are made of it.”