BITES TEAT MEAN DEATH.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXVIII, Issue 18599, 29 December 1920, Page 10

BITES TEAT MEAN DEATH.

Seeing that a monkey is a dean feeder it seems extraordinary that the bite, of such an animal should produce the terrible poisoning .which resulted in ilie death of tho King of Greece. It does not, however, appear that the mulignancy of an animal’s bit©.can be measured by what it.:feeds upon. A' dorr is a carniverous creature, yet its bito seldom produces serious results, while on the other hand' the bito of a horse or a donkey frequently result-sun poisoning. Only a few weeks ag© a woman in England did from being bitten by a donkey, while a. man lost a hand through being nipped on the thumb by a horse. A rat is the foulest feeder imaginable, yet almost every rat-catcher Las been bitten dozens of limes. And it ia n fact that most rat-catchers consider the teeth of a ferret to be much more dangerous than those of a rat. So far as mammals are concerned) the Lig flesh eaters are all dangerous. Everyone who has read tho life of Livingstone will remember how terribly he suffered from his mauling by a lion. For a long time be lay at death’s door, while for years afterwards the old wounds made by the lion’s teeth kept on breaking out afresh, usually at about the anniversary of . their 1 infliction. • .

The bite of a. tiger is equally serious, the wounds always becoming septic unless promptly attended to. In the southern and western parts of the United States the, bite of the skunk is specially dreaded, owing to the belief that it results in hydrophobia. "While the teeth of most animals, not excepting man, are capable of producing, septic poisoning, there is only one feur-leeged creature the bite of which is, scientifically - speaking, venomous. This is the so-called Gila Monster, an Ugly, blunt-tailed lizard found "only in Arizona. Slow" to wrath, when it does bite it seizes with a bulbdog grip, and the poison which it injects will kill even ho Targe an animal as a cow or a horse. ’