Animal studies

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D. Appleton and Company, 1903 - 459 páginas

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Página 278 - There is no exception to the rule that every organic being naturally increases at so high a rate, that, if not destroyed, the earth would soon be covered by the progeny of a single pair. Even slow-breeding man has doubled in twenty-five years, and at this rate, in less than a thousand years, there would literally not be standing room for his progeny.
Página 207 - Its summer plumage so exactly harmonizes with the lichen-coloured stones among which it delights to sit, that a person may walk through a flock of them without seeing a single bird; while in winter its white plumage is an almost equal protection.
Página 381 - Many lowly organized animals, as some polyps, and worms, have certain cells of the skin specially provided with pigment. These cells grouped together form what is called a pigment fleck, which can, because of the presence of the pigment, absorb more light than the skin cells, and are more sensitive to the light. By such pigment-flecks, or eye-spots, the animal can detect, by their shadows, the passing near them of moving bodies, and thus be in some measure informed of the approach of enemies or of...
Página 127 - The head usually carries the eyes, a pair of feelers (antennae), and three pairs of mouth-parts which may be fashioned into a long, slender tube to be used in sucking, and frequently as a piercing organ ; or they may be constructed for cutting and biting. The thorax bears three pairs of legs and often one or two pairs of wings. The appendages of the abdomen are usually small and few in number, or even absent. 113. Internal anatomy. — The restless activity of insects is proverbial. Some appear to...
Página 357 - Others are dull earth-coloured, and hide in holes and under logs. All these come out only at night to feed, and they are all preyed upon by snakes and birds. In contrast with these obscurely...
Página 359 - There are two intensely black spots on this margin in the appropriate position for eyes, and the whole appearance is that of a large flat face extending to the outer edge of the red margin. The effect is an intensely exaggerated caricature of a vertebrate face, which is probably alarming to the vertebrate enemies of the caterpillar. . . . The effect is also greatly strengthened by two pink whips which are swiftly protruded from the prongs of the fork in which the body terminates. . . . The end of...
Página 279 - The elephant is reckoned the slowest breeder of all known animals, and I have taken some pains to estimate its probable minimum rate of natural increase ; it will be safest to assume that it begins breeding when thirty years old, and goes on breeding till ninety years old, bringing forth six young in the interval, and surviving till one hundred years old ; if this be so, after a period of from 740 to 750 years there would be nearly nineteen million elephants alive, descended from the first pair.
Página 336 - ... regard to their mode of development and life are called facultat.ive. parasites. These latter may indeed be able to go through life -as free-living, nonparasitic animals, although, with opportunity, they live parasitically. In nearly all cases the body of a parasite is simpler in structure than the body of other animals which are closely related to the parasite — that is, animals that live parasitically have simpler bodies than animals that live free active lives, competing for food with the...
Página 378 - The male mosquitoes (Fig. 149) have many hundreds of these long, fine antennal hairs, and on the sounding of a tuning-fork these hairs have been observed to vibrate strongly. In the base of each antenna there is a most elaborate organ, composed of fine chitinous rods, and accompanying nerves and nerve cells whose function it is to take up and transmit through the auditory nerve to the brain the stimuli received from the external auditory hairs.
Página 321 - Andrena, which make little burrows in a clay bank, live in large colonies — that is, they make their nest burrows close together in the same clay bank, but each female makes her own burrow, lays her own eggs in it, furnishes it with food — a kind of paste of nectar and pollen — and takes no further care of her young. Nor has she at any time any special interest in her neighbors. But with the smaller mining bees, belonging to the genus Halictus...

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