NEW LEGS FOR OLD

Waipa Post, Volume 44, Issue 3181, 24 May 1932, Page 7

NEW LEGS FOR OLD

SOME DAILY MIRACLES. The extent to which Nature can make good the ravages of accident—or time—has within the last few years been the subject of much study, and has been turned to good account. Skin, muscle, and bone are all capable of a remarkable degree of regeneration (writes E. G. Boulenger in the London Daily Telegraph). The creatures neai*est akin to man with any capacity for effectually replacing lost parts are the amphibians. The common newt, a peculiarly defenceless creature, sometimes loses a limb, as when it falls foul of a nesting stickleback. The entire limb may be made good, but should the member attacked be only partially removed a second may develop beside it. The power which lizarlds have to renew a portion of their caudal appendage is well known. These reptiles readily part with their tails—the gyl- - 'of the detached portion usually engaging the aggressor's attention, thus effectually covering the lizard's retreat. In these creatures 'injury may result in the tail becoming duplicated. This phenomenon once caused that famous naturalist, Dr A. Gunther, who was at one time keeper of zoology at the British Museum, considerable embarrassment. As a small boy the gerat scientist was as notorious for mendacity as later he was for his veracity and learning, and when he" was six years old his outraged father promised him a beating the next time he was found perverting the truth. Shortly after the parental warning the youthful Gunther beheld for the first time a lizard with two tails a discovery which he promptly reported to the family, and for which he received a good thrashing. A crab or a lobster can still " carry on " after the loss of both claws and several of its walking legs. New limbs, small but still effective, will apapear at the next moult, and in a few successive moults these will irjegain their normal proportions. At the Zoo Aquarium fights between lobsters are frequent, and inevitable, since these usually take place at night. The ring may be found strewn with detached claws, and the reserve tanks always hold a number of combatants " in retirement," awaiting the growth of new limbs. Lower still in the scale of life come the starfish, with an even more complete capacity for regeneration. The starfish is, in fact, not so much one animal as a collection of five, and some species habitually reproduce by' detaching limbs. Most worms can make good almost any amount of damage, and this takes an extraordinary form amongst the flat worms,, or Planarians. The hind portion may refuse to follow the head portion, and the result is sometimes a fier,ce tug of war and a dramatic split. The two halves then proceed to reinstate themselves, the one with a new tail and the other with a new head. The very lowest of creatures, the protozoa, can even be rubbed through a fine sieve, the disruption so far from destroying the creatures causing them to increase a million-fold. It is regeneration at its highest—a faculty which remains as a mere vestige with ourselves in the capacity to make good by the healing of- a cut finger.