DRAGON’S FIERY BREATH

Greymouth Evening Star, 6 November 1931, Page 8

DRAGON’S FIERY BREATH

HOW OLD LEGENDS GREW. Snakes at the Zoo for the first few days of their captivity cover the glass panes of their enclosure with venom in their abortive attempts to spit at the visitors, and when the door of their cage has to be opened for the purpose of introducing food motor goggles are worn by the keepers for the protection of their eyes. Such reptiles may well have given rise to the early legends of the fiery breath of dragons and stories of toads and newts capable of spitting venom (writes E.’ G. Boulenger, Director of Zoological Society’s Aquarium, in the London “Daily Telegraph”). Several species of poisonous '.snake can spit with serious effect. The common cobra of India spits infrequently, but the ringhals of South Africa habitually employ this method of attack, showing a deadly proficiency in aiming at the eyes- It spits by closing, the jaws in such a manner that the fangs are left uncovered. Then the head is thrown back, so as to bring the hollow teeth into a horizontal position. The muscles controlling the poison glands are suddenly contracted, and from each fang is ejected suddenly and with great force a thin stream of venom.

The “horned lizards” of the United States of America and Mexico are unique in discouraging their enemies by squirting at them fine jets of blood from the corner of their eyes, to a distance of several feet.. The fluid is ejected with surprising force. SPITTING AS WEAPON. Privileged visitors being shown the service galleries of the Zoo Aquarium are often astonished by a phenomenon that can never be witnessed from the public corridor. Small and quite inoffensive fish fill their mouths with water, rise to the surface, and deliberately spit at the passing guest. The Writer's obserVa’tions' have convinced him that this demonstration is merely a sub-corisdous effort to at- ( tract attentidri. 1 The fish associate the passing of a human being with food, arid their expectations are analogous to the monkey’s outstretched paw or the ele-

phant’s supplicating trunk. Many widely different kinds of fish thus express themselves. The common gurnard will crawl up the rockery by means of its pectoral fins and advertise its desire for attention by a spit, that can be both seen and heard.

Spitting is often quite involuntary when the fish rises at some desired object, and with this in mind it is not difficult to conceive how the watergun of the famous archer fish was gradually evolved. The archer fish -is common throughout the fresh waters of Burma and the Malay Archipelago, where it deliberately ejects a jet of water at some insect that has alighted on the overhanging waterside vegetatation. Unless the coveted morsel shows great determination, it is knocked «off its perch and engulfed. Many generations of persistent spitting have, trained the archers’ jaws into a spout-shaped formation. So infallible is its method of attack that it is a popular pet of the Far East, 'shooting its tiny prey with astonishing accuracy, even in confinement.

Spitting is, with few exceptions, essentially an act of aggression. The Peruvian llama is an inveterate spitter, shooting its acidulated saliva to a considerable distance and with horrible precision. A riding llama may suddenly turn nasty when it will twist its head round, fix the person on its back with a stony glare, and shoot out a noxious fluid, delivered with the force of a garden syringe. One Zoo specimen had an extraordinary antipathy for top-hats, whilst tolerating any other form of headgear, and it never lost a chance of spoiling the silky sheen of the once’ popular

m^v n »r rdier , Beetles > common in many °f Olir C haik districts, expel a “nn at ” G # H Uld which explodes with a of si’noke 1 ° WCd by a dimiuutive cloud