On Snakes Swallowing Their Young

Do snakes actually swallow their young to protect them and later spew them out again as Dr. Ball states further in his article? Well, I have never seen them do this, and I do not know of any other student of snakes who has. Ditmars, Curator of Reptiles at the New York Zoological Gardens, has never seen anything of this kind, and he daily observes more snakes than the average man does in a lifetime

Insects and Man

Mrs. Jiggs, in the cartoon, Bringing up Father, frequently calls her husband an insect. This is a flagrant misuse of the term as an insect never has fewer nor more than six legs. It may be wingless as are the bedbugs, two winged as are all flies, or four winged as the grasshoppers, but no normal insect ever has more or less than six legs and by this one positive character you may know them

Some Suggestions for Winter Study of Biology in High Schools

Considerable criticism has recently been directed against the commonly accepted methods of teaching Biology in our secondary school and colleges. John Burroughs once re- marked that he had never dissected an animal and was glad of it, implying by this, I take it, that we do not learn Nature by dissecting her children. Recently Wheeler of Harvard, has voiced a similar criticism by saying that our teaching of Biology is suffering from academic dry rot; that laboratory dissection of a dead animal gives the student a knowledge of the details of structure of that animal without giving any knowledge of, or creating any interest in that animal as a living organism

Insects and Man

Biologically speaking, insects may be called a highly successful group, and much of this success is due to their adaptability to the conditions of their environment. They are found everywhere, and eat almost everything. All of the large groups of insects are world-wide in their distribution, though the most widely distributed are the beetles

Concerning Cottontails

The cornfield lay above a low bluff overlooking a swamp, and for half an hour I had tracked that cottontail through a perfect maze of weeds and cornstalks. Warming with the chase, I was determined to have that particular bunny if it took me all morning. if I had not known better, I would have thought he was teasing me. Time and again, his tracks led into a bunch of grass with every indication that he was there for the day, but always they led out on the other side

Popular Fallacies

Slimy as a serpent; Wise as an owl; Blind as a bat; Crazy as a loon; Quick as a cat; Ferocious as a gorilla; Dirty as a pig; Strong as a lion; Swift as an eagle; Shine like a cat’s eyes in the dark

Insects and Man

Because of their relationship to dangerous human parasites, insects have been responsible for the death of more people than all other animals put together. Confirmation of this astounding statement can be seen in the close relationship between houseflies and typhoid fever, between rat fleas and plague, tsetse flies and sleeping sickness, and that between mosquitoes and yellow fever and malaria

Wings

When \u27wings\u27 are mentioned, most people at once think of birds. But wings, and the consequent power of flight, are by no means limited to birds. Among the mammals, for example, bats have wings and are excellent flyers. In both birds and bats, the wings are merely modified front legs

Cockroaches for Laboratory Study

Teachers of high school biology are often handicapped by a lack of living material. This is particularly true in the teaching of insects. Most texts in biology use the grasshopper as a type of insect, largely, I suppose, because of its familiarity to the average pupil

On Meeting with a Fox

It is rarely that one sees a wild animal at its best. As a hunter, I have shot many beautiful birds and small mammals, but on retrieving them, in spite of my elation at their capture, I have always had the haunting feeling that the dead thing in my hand was not the creature at which I had aimed. As an anatomist, I have dissected scores of animals, but always do I realize that the stiff, cold thing under my scalpel is not quite the thing it was when alive