Here it comes well into play in lessening the shock of alighting, an emergency enabling him to escape some enemies—as a weasel or mink, perhaps—which may chase him around in the trees.
The arrangement of the long hairs, projecting out sidewise on the bone, is strikingly like that of the feathers on the tail of the very earliest reptile-like birds which had long bony tails, used doubtless as the squirrel's, since they were down-sailers rather than up-flutterers—if I may be allowed to so compound my words and ideas. Some other downward-leaping mammals have the hairs similarly arranged. Another rodent, the anomalure, which flies down, as a flying-squirrel, by thin membranes, has special horny scales on the under side of its tail either to assist in climbing or to resist slipping down when a tree trunk is grasped.
The squirrel's tail, therefore, is a factor of his safety, as well as a feature of his ornamentation.
Another use which he makes of it is that when he "lies down to pleasant dreams" it forms "the drapery of his couch"—a coverlid for his head and body.
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| FROM COL. CHI. ACAD. SCIENCES. | NORTHERN HARE. ⅓ Life-size. | COPYRIGHT 1899, NATURE STUDY PUB. CO., CHICAGO. |
THE NORTHERN PRAIRIE HARE.
