Читать книгу Intelligence in Plants and Animals онлайн

35 страница из 113

ssss1

Every one knows that the long cord or thong, called the lasso, is the peculiar weapon of the South American hunter. Almost from his earliest childhood the young Gaucho learns to amuse himself with it, and as soon as he is able to walk takes great pleasure in catching young birds and other animals around his father’s hut, hurling the long lash with such dexterity that the noose drops over their bodies and brings them to his feet. Did we wish to select from among all the denizens of life the most brilliant, graceful, and sylph-like, whose very life-histories read more like the romance of poetry than sober reality, we would choose those which might be appropriately designated the lasso-throwers.

Now among animals, as is only too well known, any weapons which they could be called upon to use must develop in their own bodies, and therefore it could hardly be suspected that a simple jelly-animal could be provided with a lasso ready grown in its own flesh. Yet it is so, for in that class of animals, which ranks just above the sponges, we discover a weapon of this kind as simple and as deadly, and far more wonderful in its action than any used by man.