Animals Of Tropical Africa

You will now have realized how there are certain points common to all members of the animal kingdom But at the same time from what you see of animals you must also realize that there are a great many differences.

The differences, you notice, appear in size and shape and general appearance; some animals have bones like a dog, or none like a worm; some have a coat of hair like the dog, or fur like the cat; others like the frog have no coat at all, while fishes have scales.

Again, we find the hare racing along the road, and the tortoise creeping along slowly; bats flying in the air, and rats and mice living in holes; fish living in the sea, and birds building their nests in trees; elephants enormous in size, and mice only a few inches long; the hippopotamus living in the river and the monkeys swinging in the trees. Now these differences are not merely due to chance.

We have seen how, in the main, animals are chiefly occupied in searching for food, and how their bodies are arranged in the same way for dealing with this food, viz., with a stomach storehouse, and a blood circulation which acts as carrier and distributor of the food to the rest of the body. Why, then, should the animal frame be so different in all the different forms of animals we know?

The reason is that this search for food goes on in very different places and under very different conditions, and the food itself is often very different, and the animal must be suited Or adapted to the different conditions under which it lives or it would sooner or later perish So that while a leopard, whose home is the forest and whose food is some other animal, has everything suitable for scenting, catching, and eating its prey, it would do very badly if it had to live in the sea; while a fish, with its smooth body and a tail and fins to swim with, does very well in the sea, though it would die in a few minutes if put on dry land. Not only must animals be suited to the kind of place they live in, but they must also be protected against their enemies or they would be killed.

This protection may be something they can actively use, like the bite of a snake or the horns of a bullock Or it may be something which enables them to escape quickly from an enemy, such as the power of running very swiftly which we find in the cob or duiker with their long legs and hoofs. The tortoise is protected by great shields on its back and below, and the crocodile by a tough scaly hide. Another very important way in which animals are protected is by their color, a very interesting and often beautiful method known as "protective coloration".

You must have noticed many examples of this "protective coloration". You know that most wild animals are a brown or tawny color. None are red or blue or purple. This is because the brown or tawny color matches best the animal's surroundings, and renders it much less visible to its enemies than if it were some brighter color. A cob, grazing in the forest with a background of trunks and branches and dead leaves, is extremely hard to see. A leopard with its yellow skin and black spots resembles the ground in the forest flecked with sunlight coining through the leaves overhead, though indeed the leopard has few enemies to fear. Snakes living in the grass are usually green. You will be able to think for yourselves of a great many examples of animals being colored to match their surroundings.

A chameleon is even able to change its color as it emerges from the shade into the light, and in countries where the earth is brown in summer and white with snow in winter, hares and birds change their coats from brown to white. Perhaps the most striking examples of all are the praying mantis and stick insects, who do not only resemble their surrounding' in color, but also in form, the mantis having a body exactly like a leaf, and the stick insect a body resembling a twig It is necessary when

studying animals to bear this in mind, and to notice how exactly every animal is suited to the place in which it lives, to the kind of food it eats, and to the need of being protected from its enemies. It is no wonder that there are so many different kinds of animals when we consider the very different kinds of regions there are on the earth for them to haunt.

There is the sea, the sea-shore, the dry land and the air. There are the cold regions as we go very far north or south, and the hot regions near the equator; there are deserts, open grass lands, and forests, lakes and rivers, valleys and mountains. Yet we find animals thriving in every one, their physical form, their habits and their modes of life strikingly adapted to fit in with the character of their haunts, whatever they may be.