Weapons in Nature
Most wild creatures have built-in weapons which help to keep them out of serious trouble. Horns, strong teeth, claws, and poisonous stings are just a few kinds of them.
There are even a few fishes which can give other creatures quite an electric shock when they want to!
An animal's weapons are very important to him. He can use them to catch food. Very often, too, they help him defend himself against attack by other creatures. He never has to learn how or when to use them. Even while he is very young he can make them work surprisingly well.
A Brown Bear has two sets of first-rate weapons. One, of course, is his big teeth inside strong jaws. The other is his paws with their long, curved claws. With these he catches many a meal of raw fresh fish by wading right in the water and scooping up a big trout or maybe a salmon. He looks too large and clumsy for this sort of fishing. But he can really move very fast when he wants to.
Several other kinds of bears fish this way during the warm weather. They also use their front feet and claws to rake the ripe fruit from blueberry and other bushes. Fruit is one of their favorite foods. So is the honey which wild bees often store in hollow trees. The bears just rip the tree apart and gobble the honey. Their thick fur is fine protection against the bees' stings while they lick up this sweet meal.
When two wild bears get mad at each other, they sometimes have a real battle. They wrestle, bite and scratch with amazing speed and skill. And when one of them decides that he has had enough, he will take off as fast as a man could run.
The African Lion also uses his great claws and jaws for food-catching as well as self-defense. An old male has a thunderous roar, too, which sometimes frightens other animals almost to death!
The Lion can drag down and kill an animal considerably larger than himself. His strength is tremendous; and much of his hunting is done at night. When he charges an enemy, he can rush forward at a speed of forty miles an hour. But some hunters say that he is not nearly as brave as he pretends to be.
Another of the large wild beasts of Africa is the Rhinoc-eros. He is much bigger and heavier than a lion, and his thick skin is very tough. There are no claws on his broad feet, but he has a bad temper and is afraid of nothing. He sometimes has two great horns on top of his snout, instead of only one. They are not solid, like the horns of a deer, but are made of many long, tough hairs cemented together. it is a strange fact that the Rhinoceros has such poor eyesight that, when he charges, his enemy can often escape by jumping to one side at the last minute. He uses his horns almost entirely as weapons. They are of little use for gathering food, as their owner eats nothing except parts of plants which cannot fight back!
The Bighorn Sheep also lives on grass and other plants, like our ordinary tame sheep. The males have tremendous curling horns which they use for fighting each other or any other animals foolish enough to attack them. Their method is to lower their heads and charge at top speed. When two of them rush at each other they crash head-on like a couple of runaway locomotives. These smashes can be heard for a long distance in our high western mountains where this splendid animal lives.
Many kinds of birds, like the Mute Swan, use their bills mostly for gathering food and also for fighting. This web-footed water bird is pure white except for some black on his wings and face. When he is hungry he pokes his long neck and head under water and grabs submerged plants and any little creatures he can find. His best weapons are his wings, with which he can strike really heavy blows.
The Mute Swan is one of our largest birds. When he flies he is almost five feet long from the tip of his bill to the end of his tail. And his opened wings may spread as much as eight feet.
There will be a part two to this chapter soon.