Part 43

The creatures seldom make their appearance above water in daylight. They prefer to gaze in the moonlight, and this has added to their humanlike appearance which has given rise to the mermaid legends.

One of the few persons to study the animal at close range, O. W. Barrett, an American explorer, tells us the following concerning the manatee:

“The animal still is fairly common in most fresh-water bayous, lagoons and rivers along the east coast of Nicaragua. One of the best-known herds on the Caribbean Coast inhabits the Indio River, just north of Greytown, Nicaragua. Estimates of its number vary from a few score to several hundred. The herd apparently is stationary there and does not increase or decrease to any notable degree from year to year, although the natives take a heavy toll....

“A manatee can remain under water from 20 to 30 minutes when frightened. During the daytime the slightest unusual noise, like rain falling on a tin pail or the spitting of the hunter, is sufficient to keep the whole herd submerged for hours, yet while they are grazing the hunter may go up and slap them on the back unnoticed.

“Families consisting of a bull, a cow, and one or two calves usually ... merge into a herd of from 10 to 50 or more individuals living in a certain stretch of river, concentrating during the day and scattering at night. They generally graze at night, although a few individuals may be seen feeding in broad daylight. The body is held nearly vertical while grazing. The head is held well out of water, while the armlike flippers poke the grass toward the mouth. The noise made by the flapping of the huge upper lip and the crunching of the large teeth can be heard distinctly 200 yards or more away. The sound is much like that of horses grazing in a pasture. Adult manatees appear to average somewhere between 8 and 10 feet in length. Some—old females, presumably—may reach 12 feet.”

A much more seclusive animal is the true “mermaid” of legend—the dugong of the open ocean. Unlike the manatee, it is a creature of the sea and seldom ventures into the fresh-water rivers and lagoons. Few naturalists ever have actually seen one of the creatures. Mr. Barrett’s first acquaintance with the creature came in Mozambique, Portuguese East Africa, when some native fishermen caught in their net what they described as a “white porpoise.” They were terrified and gladly presented their catch to an Italian blacksmith. This man crudely embalmed the animal, placed it in a rough coffin and freighted it to Johannesburg, where he rented a show room and made a fortune exhibiting “the only genuine mermaid—half fish, half human.”

For many years mariners in the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea have told of seeing objects resembling women standing waist high on the surface. Zoologists of the Middle Ages described a “bishop fish” which had been seen standing with outstretched arms, supposedly blessing the waters. In nearly every case, it seems likely, the objects were strange water animals—the dugongs. They have a curious resemblance to human beings, especially naked women, when seen from a distance.

Nearly all mermaid stories have originated in water where dugongs are abundant. Spanish and Portuguese sailors, the first Europeans to encounter the animal, called it the “woman fish.” The creature is best known to Malagasy fishermen of Madagascar who, while they prize its flesh highly, attribute to it human qualities and affinities. After capturing one the fisherman must perform various religious rites and before he is allowed to sell the flesh at a public market he must take an oath that there have been no unnatural relations between himself and his mermaid victim.

The female’s breasts are roughly in about the position of those of women. She has the habit of rising about halfway out of the water and sometimes has been described as holding her baby in her flippers. Little is known of the life history and habits of the dugong. It is a creature of the shallow sea which never has survived long in captivity. It seems to share with the elephant and with man the faculty of shedding tears when it is in trouble or pain. One which was kept for several months in the Colombo zoo in Ceylon constantly was weeping. Malagasy fishermen used to torture the animals in order to collect the tears, which they sold as love charms.

Another extant member of the “mermaid” family is the manatee, found on both sides of the Atlantic in the warm, fresh water rivers of Africa and South America. Although never mistaken for a human, it is accorded considerable superstitious regard. The Kalaboi of Nigeria regard it as a sacred animal and the incarnation of a human soul. If a fisherman kills one, by accident or otherwise, he must undergo an elaborate cleansing ceremony which involves offerings before images of his ancestors and remaining indoors for three days. During this period he is rubbed from head to foot with a yellow pigment by women of his family. While the purgative rites are in progress the women sing at dawn and dusk. On the third day there is a feast on the meat, but a bit must be given to every household in the village to lay upon the shrines of ancestors.

Both manatee and dugong, and formerly the extinct sea cow of Bering Sea, are probably the closest living relatives of the elephant. They have similar brain and heart structure. The molar teeth of the mermaid family are like those of early elephants. The male dugong has tusks. There also is a great extension of the upper lip which overlaps the side of the mouth—a start in the direction of a trunk.

The next nearest relatives of the elephants are the hyraces, or conies, of Africa and Syria, best known in the form of expensive fur coats. They look and act like rabbits. A Hebrew prophet made them symbolic of timidity. Only a taxonomist would suspect these little creatures could claim any kinship to the largest of land mammals.

Limbless Lizards and Glass Snakes

A supposedly welcome guest in the underground chambers of leaf cutter ants is the amphisbaena, a nearly limbless lizard about a foot long which looks somewhat like a gigantic earth worm. These creatures, seldom seen, can be found from Brazil north to lower California and there is one isolated species in Florida.

“Those brought to me,” observed the noted British naturalist and explorer of Brazil, Henry Walter Bates, “were generally not much more than a foot in length. They are of cylindrical shape having, properly speaking, no neck, and the blunt tail which is only about an inch in length is of the same shape as the head. This peculiar form, added to their habit of wriggling backwards as well as forwards, has given rise to the fable that they have two heads, one at each extremity. They are extremely sluggish in their motions, and are clothed with scales that have the form of small imbedded plates arranged in rings around the body. The eye is so small as to be scarcely perceptible.

“They live habitually in the subterranean chamber of the Sauba ant; only coming out of their abodes occasionally in the night-time. The natives call the amphisbaena the “mai das Saubas,” or mother of Saubas, and believe it to be poisonous, although it is perfectly harmless. They say the ants treat it with great affection and that if the “snake” be taken away from the nest the ants also will forsake it. I believe, however, that they feed on the saubas, for I once found remains of the ants in the stomach of one of them.

“Their motions are quite peculiar. The undilatable jaws, small eyes and curious plated integument distinguish them from other snakes. These properties evidently have some relation to their residence in the subterranean abodes.”

Closely related is the Florida worm lizard, rose-colored and completely legless and earless. It is about a foot long and looks so much like an earthworm that expert collectors have been fooled. A peculiarity is that it always goes down into a burrow tail first.

The Arizona worm lizard, a somewhat fabulous animal of the same family, is not, so far as is known, represented in any collection. One veteran miner told of dragging “a purple snake with two legs on its neck” from the gravel. A woman claimed to have kept as a pet for three months “a purple snake with its legs where its ears ought to be.”

All these animals are in the same general family as the glass snakes of Europe and the United States. These are long, slender, legless lizards. They are burrowing animals which occasionally are turned up by ploughmen, but they often come to the surface voluntarily at night. Specimens occasionally found in daylight usually are hiding in dark recesses.

Each animal consists of apparently quite separate parts, body and tail. The body is from six inches to a foot long, according to species, and the tail may be twice as long. The animal can disengage its tail by a single twist when caught by that organ. The slightest injury or rough handling causes this tail to fly to pieces. Each piece wriggles energetically, supposedly to attract attention while the lizard itself crawls to safety in its burrow. The body does not break up and does not, as popularly reputed, come back later to gather up fragments of its tail. Instead it grows a new tail, always smaller than the original, from the stump.

The Only Bug in the Sea

Only one group of insects has taken to the sea—the small, gray long-legged water striders. Unlike fresh water relatives of the same genus, these have permanently lost their wings. They have no further use for this means of movement in the ocean.

Great numbers have been found floating and swimming in the open sea around Pacific islands. Both nymphs and adults sometimes are blown onto the beaches by strong winds. They are awkward on land, seek shelter in any depression in the sand, and fall easy prey to birds and the multitude of ghost crabs which glide over the sands after dark.

On the surface of shallow water the insects are found in groups of hundreds of thousands. Apparently they feed on plankton which rises to the surface at night. They themselves are not eaten by fish. This is probably due to scent glands which secrete a strong odor which is repellant to the ever hungry vertebrates.

In small embayments are found enormous numbers of one type of water strider, the female of which is less than a twelfth of an inch long. The male is considerably smaller and rides on the back of his mate to ensure that the two will not be separated by wind or tide.

Insects are by far the most abundant of all land animals; the reasons why only one genus has invaded the sea have been the subject of much speculation. On the continents, insects are found in salt water lakes where the saline concentration is much greater than in sea water. Other types live in torrential streams and waterfalls where they get much rougher treatment than would come from wave action. There are two probable reasons for the failure to invade the ocean. One is the fact that no insect ever has been able to live in very deep water. The “bug” race has evolved a special breathing mechanism admirably suited to life on land but rather poorly adapted to life under water. Besides, the seas have been taken over almost completely by the remote relatives of the insects, the crustaceans. These include, besides crabs and shrimps, the superabundant copepods, the “lice of the ocean.” Invaders from the land never have been able to compete with them.

A Crocodile With Life After Death