The fiercest beasts of all the carnivorous animals are found in the Felidae family, which includes three groups—the Cat tribe, the Lynx and the Hunting Leopard.
This is the simplest and most easily remembered of all the divisions of the great order of Carnivorous animals.
When the game is taken they divide it equally, but if any of the largerCarnivorous animals approach to take a share in the feast, they all unite against the intruder.
Purely carnivorous in its diet, the Polar Bear subsists chiefly on the Seals it contrives to trap by watching their breathing holes patiently for hours, or it may be for days together.
This incident gives some advantage to the fugitives; for the carnivorous troop halt for a few seconds to devour the body of their companion.
For easy grouping we will cling to the old method of classifying all the Carnivorous animals under the three main orders of Plantigrade, Digitigrade, and Amphibious Carnivora.
The Jaguar is also called the American Tiger; it is the largest carnivorous animal of the New World.
The fierce little Weasel, which is taken as a type of the whole Weasel family is the smallest of all the carnivorous animals.
THE Carnivorous animals form the largest and most powerful family of Mammals that live on the land; and in this family are also included many water Mammals.
The teeth are often distinguished by the huge size of the superior canines, which are "weapons for penetrating wounds, without rival among carnivorous animals.
Their likeness to the carnivorous Marsupials has also been insisted upon; but it would seem that the succession of teeth in the Creodonta is typically Eutherian.
In this mainly carnivorous or insectivorous division of the Marsupials the incisors are four or five on each side of the upper jaw, and one or two fewer in the lower jaw.
Front view of the skull of Tasmanian Devil (Sarcophilus ursinus), showing Polyprotodont and carnivorous dentition.
Mr. Thomas thinks that the persistence of this and of some of the other larger carnivorous Marsupials in Tasmania after their extinction in Australia is not unconnected with the advent of the Dingo.
Bonavia has recently advanced (Studies in Evolution, London, 1895) the somewhat fantastic view that the pigment-patches of Carnivorous and other mammals are a reminiscence of an earlier scaly condition.
They are insectivorous and carnivorous as well as vegetarian; and Mr. Lydekker suggests[421] that their abundance and hardiness is to be traced to this fondness for a mixed diet.
It was apparently plantigrade, and would have had not a little likeness to a carnivorous type.
The teeth seem to be carnivorous and Marsupial-like in form; but as already mentioned, in connexion with the general structure of teeth, more than a single premolar is replaced.
Flower in his general account of theCarnivorous skeleton.
Leaving out of account the carnivorous animals, the brutes seem to satisfy their own wants without interfering with the satisfaction of others, and, except where the possession of females is concerned, to live in peace with each other.
These changes are reflected in the progress of marine life, though their influence is probably less than that of the great carnivorous monsters which now fill the waters.
The obvious result of this was to shelter the primitive life of Australia from invasion by higher types, especially from the great carnivorous mammals which would presently develop.
A genus of carnivorous mammals, including the domestic cat, the lion, tiger, panther, and similar animals.
They had teeth, and were essentially carnivorous swimming ostriches.
In the carnivorous tribes this sense is, perhaps, at its highest ratio, and many pursue their prey guided by their olfactory organs alone.
Among birds, the carnivorous tribes, the parrots, and the swans, and true ducks, possess the sense of taste in considerable perfection.
Many of the birds showed in the absence of any predatory enemies--there being no carnivorous quadrupeds to hunt them or their young--a tendency to lose the power of flight, and some had done so altogether.
His teeth are not, and never were, from his earliest ape-like days, adapted to true carnivorous diet.
Truly carnivorous animals, which eat the raw carcases of other animals, have a different shape of teeth.
It must not be supposed that carnivorous plants are peculiar in the kind of food they use, but merely in the source from which they obtain it.
It would seem, therefore, that the use of such food as the bodies of insects and the digesting of this food are not facts which are peculiar to carnivorous plants, but belong to all plants as well.
The chief peculiarity of carnivorous plants, therefore, does not lie in the food which they use, but in the methods which they have worked out for securing it.
It will be observed that these parasites are using exactly the same sort of food as do the carnivorous plants.
Prominent among the carnivorous plants are the pitcher plants, whose leaves form tubes, or urns, or pitchers of various forms, which contain water, and to which insects are attracted and drowned.
Another group of carnivorous plants consists of the sun-dews which grow in swampy regions and are quite common in our sphagnum swamps.
The skull of a carnivorous Dinosaur possesses teeth which, though easily distinguished from those of Pterodactyles, can be best compared with them.
Therefore there is a closer fundamental resemblance between some carnivorous Dinosaurs and Pterodactyles than might have been anticipated.
They are commonly longer than in Dinosaurs; but among some of the carnivorous Dinosaurs their length approximates to that seen in Pterodactyles.
In such a Dinosaur as the American carnivorous Ceratosaurus the two bars of the pubis and ischium remain separate and diverging, and there is no film of bone extending over the interspace between them.
In some of the older genera of these carnivorous Dinosaurs of the Trias, the lateral vacuities of the head are as large as in Dimorphodon.
But while Pterodactyles are sometimes Mammalian in having the head of the thigh bone moulded as in carnivorous Mammals and Man, the corresponding bone in a Dinosaur is more like that of a Bird.
It is possible that some of the carnivorous Dinosaurs also possessed limb bones with pneumatic cavities.
The small bones found at the extremities of the pubes in such carnivorous Dinosaurs as Aristosuchus are blended by bony union with the pubes.
Nevertheless, I can follow a worthy example, even though the exemplar be only a carnivorous bloom.
The carnivorous orchid was having a good day and keeping its own counsel as a sensible orchid expectant of continued patronage should do.
In the case of wolves, and other savage-tempered carnivorous species, the distressed fellow is frequently torn to pieces and devoured on the spot.
But yet the idea that the boy had killed his favourite, and eaten her, was hardly admissible: the deed was so atrocious he could not conceive any human being capable of it, strong as circumstances were against his carnivorous herd.
The value of carnivorous mammals and the larger birds of prey in destroying rats and mice should be more fully recognized, especially by the farmer and the game preserver.
These animals are so wild and mischievous, that they can neither be tamed nor subdued; they bite dreadfully, and although they are not among the carnivorous animals, yet they excite fear by their frightful voice and ferocious air.
By this drawing it also appears that the feet of the sea-bear are formed like those of dogs, and other carnivorous animals, whereas those of the land-bear are shaped like the human hand.
With his natural efficiency of 1, he fought off his carnivorous enemies and got himself food and shelter.
Birds, as well as quadrupeds, may be divided into two great classes, according to their food: the Carnivorous and the Graminivorous.
Then thecarnivorous shellfish approach from all directions, foremost amongst them being the different species of Cominella.
Cockles found on the surface are to be avoided as unhealthy, and, unless they die naturally, are soon killed by the carnivorous shellfish.
But, if the philosophic Taine is severe in his characterization of the "carnivorous types" of the English race, he makes ample amends in his descriptions of others.
Is this," he inquires philosophically, "a cause or an effect of the carnivorous regime?
They left no memorials behind them, because, if they perished on the land, their bodies decomposed or became the prey of carnivorous animals; if on the water, they were buoyant and floated till they were devoured by predaceous fish or birds.
With them a few carnivorous animals are associated, among which are a species of fox and gennet.
A] In such shallow-water beds cephalopoda are rare, and, instead of ammonites and belemnites, numerous genera of carnivorous trachelipods appear.
Men who are fed with carnivorous aliments, and drenched with spirituous liquors, have a sharp adust blood, which turns their brains a hundred different ways.
This Booklet has been the means of persuading a great number of men and women to abandon the carnivorous habit.
The California grizzly occasionally reaches a thousand pounds, while the enormous brown Kadiak bears, the largestcarnivorous animals in the world, reach two thousand pounds; but the black bear usually averages about two hundred.
Cruel as fate is the law of the woods, but it is also the law of the shambles and carnivorous man.
The chief enemy of the Bombardiers is a much larger and very handsome carnivorous beetle known as Calosoma.
The parson was in the act of turning up his coat-sleeves, and was still discoursing learnedly upon the carnivorous and frugivorous tastes of the different species of the plantigrade family.
You see, in a mountain badger, which is more carnivorous than the prairie variety, the canine teeth are more fully developed.
In the talons of a carnivorousfowl was closed the tender wing of a trembling dove as white as snow.
The sight of a victim's blood shed by the carnivorous lust of man made me shudder.
The same principle applies to other carnivorous animals.
Thus we see that even carnivorous animals require, for the maintenance of the body-functions, a comparatively small amount of nitrogenous material.
This is what happens in the case of carnivorous animals that have excretory organs especially adapted to the converting and the eliminating of useless or surplus products.
Some authorities have recently advised that people should not chew meat at all, but should swallow it as do carnivorous animals.
