QUEER HABTTS OF A STRANGE CREATURE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17568, 19 June 1925, Page 11

QUEER HABTTS OF A STRANGE CREATURE.

’1 here r-ire few st range r crcalures 1 han i the h’.ng-fish, which lives in the streams ! and rivers of Africa. It has a peculiar ! appearance, with two pairs of limbs ! which are more like leg:; than fins, aiu! j a powerful tail. It has lungs as well ! as gills, and it is therefore able to I breathe both in the water and on land. ! Hut the. most extraordinary thing i about the lung-fish is that it is able to build a house for itself! During the I wet season it lives in the water like an ordinary fish, but when the rirv season begins, in August, il makes its wav ; ashore and sleeps until the rain falls ■' again in December. It digs a hole ■ about eighteen inches deep in the soft ■ mud. and curls up in it in the shape i of a fisnhook. Then it pours out, a kind | of slime which protects it from the j mud, which is baked hard by the summer heat. \\ hilc it is asleep- or, rather, in a 'tat 9. of unconsciousness, it lives upon its own fat. and when its house is broken up by the rain it emerges. looking thin and hungry so hungry that it will turn cannibal and bite < ft the legs of other lung-fish.