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... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 2: January 1978 Issue Contents Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues This Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Hedgehogs Use Toad Venom For Defense European hedgehogs chew toad skins to extract venom from the paratoid glands. They then lick their spines with the saliva-venom mixture. Experiments with human volunteers prove that the venomanointed spines are much more painful and irritating than clean ones. Such hedgehog behavior is innate and fully developed before the juveniles leave the nest. Tenrecs, which are similar to hedgehogs but in an entirely different family, display a somewhat different self-anointing type of behavior that must have developed independently. Conclusion: self-anointing with toad venom is so useful that it developed twice under evolutionary pressures. (Brodie, Edmund D., Jr.; "Hedgehogs Use Toad Venom in Their Own Defense," Nature, 268:627, 1977.) Reference. Hedgehog anointing and other idiosyncrasies may be found in Chapter BMB in Biological Anomalies: Mammals I. This book is described here . From Science Frontiers #2 , January 1978 . 1978-2000 William R. Corliss ...
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... (above) The echidna is one of the monotremes-- an egg-laying mammal. Like its relative, the platypus, it is a strange mixture of mammalian, marsupial, and reptilian characteristics. For example, echidna eggs are soft and leathery, like those of reptiles, but they are brooded in a marsupial-like pouch. The emerging baby echidna has an egg tooth like the birds and reptiles, while the adult has no teeth at all. Rather, it has a narrow snout through which it ingests ants and termites caught on its sticky tongue. In this it resembles the mammalian ant-eaters, which are also toothless but an ocean away from Australia. In fact, the echidna is often called a "spiny anteater" for it has the sharp spines of a hedgehog or porcupine. There are more anatomical peculiarities, but let us focus on the echidna's strange behavior during the mating season. At this time, 2 to 8 echidnas can be seen roaming the Australian bush in "trains" headed by a female with the smallest male acting as a caboose. When mating time arrives, the female anchors herself to a tree with her forelegs. To-gether the males dig a circular "mating rut" up to 10 inches deep around the tree. (Australians have puzzled over these circular trenches for years.) Eventually the strongest male evicts the other males from the trench, the purpose of which now becomes apparent. As the old saying goes, porcupines make love very. Well, the echidna has an interesting technique; he simple lays ...
Terms matched: 1 - Score: 15 - 15 May 2017 - URL: /sf074/sf074b07.htm
... Science Frontiers ONLINE No. 2: January 1978 Other pages Home Page Science Frontiers Online All Issues Last Issue Next Issue Sourcebook Project Sourcebook Subjects Contents Archaeology The Stone Enigmas of New England Astronomy Sun-Earth-Moon System May Not Be Stable Changes in Solar Rotation Biology Hopeful Monsters Rather Than Gradual Evolution? Hedgehogs Use Toad Venom for Defense Blind Man Runs on Lunar Time Infections From Comets Geology Will Radiohalos in Coalified Wood Upset Geological Clocks? How Real Are Biological Extinctions in the Fossil Record? Geophysics Another Indian Ocean Light Wheel Ghostly White Disk and Light Beam in Sky Fast-moving Dark Bands Cross Halo The Morning Glory Giant Ball Lightning Psychology Does Man Survive Death? ...
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