The How and Why Library/Wild Animals/Section VIII
VIII. Mr. Nose Horn and Mr. River Horse
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"How do you say them? And which is which?" That is what the very little boy asked about the rhinoceros and the hippopotamus when he came home from the London zoo. Their dreadful names made his head ache, and he couldn't tell them apart. He was sure children could have made up much better names for animals.
"Well, why is a dog a dog?"
"It isn't," said the very little boy; "it's a bow-wow." His papa laughed, for he was a very bright papa and saw the point. And then he told the very little boy that a great many things seemed to have been named, as a baby names a dog "bow-wow," by something about them that a child would notice first. Once upon a time, perhaps, a hunter in Africa or India, came upon two strange beasts. They both had enormous bodies on very short legs, and they both liked to wallow in ..the mud. When he went home he wanted to tell his friends about them so they would know the animals, too, if they ever saw them. One he called Mr. Nose Horn. That is, if he had been an Englishman, he would have said nose horn, but as he was a Greek, he said rhino-ceros, which means the same thing. The most striking things about the other animal was its huge horse-like face, and its habit of living most of the time and feeding in the water. So he called that animal hippo-pot-amus, two Greek words meaning river-horse.
No child could have made up simpler names than those. But, oh dear, when you come to study these queer animals it does seem that those wise old Greeks might have found better names. If they had thought of the shape of his body, his short legs, his rough, thick skin, of how he likes to wallow in a mud puddle and then go to sleep in the sun, of his four-hoofed toes, and of his sword tusks like those of wild boars in German forests, they would have called the hippopotamus the water-pig. And if those old Norsemen who used to roam over the northern seas in big row boats had seen the animal, these are the things they would have noticed: He can stay under water from five to eight minutes, he spouts when he comes up for air, his naked skin is oiled so he can slip through the water easily, and under that skin is a thick layer of solid fat. They would surely have thought the hippopotamus a land whale.The hippopotamus has a body as long as the elephant's. It is from ten to fifteen feet around the middle, but the animal's thick legs are so short that he stands only five or six feet from the ground. Really his legs are better for swimming than for walking. He has the small, dull eyes of the pig sunk in folds of skin, small ears, a wrinkled, scowling forehead, a mouth two feet wide, and a bulging upper lip. He can use his sharp-edged tusks for rooting and for fighting, as the wild boar uses his tusks. He has a mustache of feeler hairs on his upper lip—like a cat? No, it is more like the bristles around the mouths of some whales—especially baby whales. But he doesn't breathe through holes in his head and spout water when he comes up to breathe, as the whale does. He has nostrils like other land animals. When he dives, he shuts his nose holes to keep out water, as the camel and giraffe shut theirs, to keep out sand.
Like other hoofed animals, the hippopotamus lives in herds and feeds on plants. From two to three dozen live together on the banks and in the beds of the warm rivers of Africa. They are not as bright as elephants, neither are they stupid. Not more than one or two of a herd are ever caught in the same kind of trap. Where hunters are about, the hippopotamus does not snort and blow when he comes up to breathe. Sometimes a herd leaves a place that is much hunted. They are rather timid and peaceable animals. When they hear a sound, or smell something they do not understand, they sink under water with only their noses above, and stand motionless, hidden among water plants. Maybe you have seen mud turtles do the same thing.
If attacked, a hippopotamus fights ferociously A big bull hippopotamus will swim under a boat and tip it over, or bite a big piece out of the side, with his huge bark-cutting teeth. He chases the men in the water and gores them with his tusks. There are terrible "rogue," or tramp hippos, too, as there are among elephants.
A mother hippopotamus is the fiercest of all, if anything threatens her baby. She has only one at a time, and she makes it her chief business to look after him. He isn't born a swimmer, so for a long time he lives mostly on his mother's back. If caught young the baby hippopotamus is easily tamed, but he isn't bright enough to learn tricks. When his keeper comes to his cage he opens his two-foot wide mouth and begs for food in the most comical way. He asks for it much as a pig does. At home a herd of hippopotamuses at play shout with loud, harsh voices, but in a cage they creak and groan and squeal like very rusty hinges of a door.When a herd of hippopotamuses in the Nile River becomes tired of a diet of water plants, they climb up higher and steeper banks than you could climb, break into fields and eat wheat and sugar cane. Just think of having a drove of animals in your corn field as big as elephants with their legs sawed off, with stomachs that hold five bushels, and with the table manners of pigs! Then, sometimes, they like to plaster their red and brown and gray-splotched, hairless bodies with mud, and go to sleep in the sun just like pigs. The only thing that will keep them out of a field is a bon-fire. Practically all wild animals are afraid of fire. That is a good thing to remember if you ever go camping in the woods or mountains.
It is the rhinoceros, or nose horn, that ought to have hippo (horse) in his name. He is a very distant relation of the horse. He has teeth like a horse and a three-toed foot. The horse, today, has only one toe in a solid hoof, but in his leg are two splints where, ages and ages ago, there were two more toes that dwindled away and disappeared. No horse, wild or tame, or any of his near relatives, the zebras, wild ponies or donkeys, has a horn. So, perhaps, you will not be surprised to learn that a rhinoceros' horn isn't a horn at all, nor even a tusk. It is more like a corn.
This is the difference: A tusk is an overgrown tooth, a horn grows from the bones of the head, a finger nail is a sort of horny substance that grows from the flesh, a corn is a thickening of the skin. You get a corn on a toe where a shoe rubs or pinches. In rooting about for his food, or in fighting, the rhinoceros may have bumped his nose and kept on bumping it until a "corn" grew there. That "corn" is really a tuft of stiff bristles cemented together with a kind of horny glue. Around the base of it the thick hide grows in leathery folds, and the outer layer of the "corn" often peels back in shreds, like the rough bark fibre on a cocoanut shell. If you watch a rhinoceros in a cage, you may see his nose-horn move when he wrinkles his thick, over-hanging lip and forehead.
Except that he is a huge, nearly hairless beast who likes to wallow in the mud and water, the rhinoceros is not in the least like the hippopotamus. His legs, while thick, are longer, and lift his body higher from the ground. His head tapers to a pointed muzzle, and he has the upright, nervous ears of the horse. A regular wild horse in armor he is, for his thick, leathery skin is laid on him in folds that overlap at the natural joints of his body. Having such a weapon right between and below his eyes, where it is always insight, the rhinoceros doesn't miss many chances of using his nose-horn. He doesn't try to avoid trouble as the more timid hippopotamus does.
The rhinoceros is a grazing animal, too, but does not find his food in the water. He feeds by night on wooded hillsides, in the brush or on swamps, and uses his nose-horn to pry up roots and his horse teeth to bite off grass. During the heat of the day he often takes a cool bath and rolls in the mud. Very likely he goes into the water many times for the same reason as the elephant. He is tormented by flies and stinging insects. Like the elephant he, too, has a feathered friend. Isn't it odd that the rhinoceros bird should also have a nose-horn? He is Mr. Horn Bill. This bird travels around on the animal's back and picks the insects out of the folds of skin. He has that choice feeding ground all to himself, for the rhinoceros baby doesn't ride on its mama's back. Papa pushes the baby along in front of him with his horn, as if he were in a baby cab, on wheels.
The rhinoceros can hear and smell well, but, like the hippopotamus, his small eyes are very dim. The bird on his back often gives him the first warning of danger by uttering a loud cry. At that the animal plunges into the brush or makes for the nearest water. He can out-run a horse, but he doesn't run away, as a rule. He merely chooses his own place to fight. He runs into a pool or river, rolls over in the water, and heaves up, his huge, black, armored sides dripping.
Ten feet long and seven high, with a dagger-like curved weapon three or four feet long on his nose, the bull rhinoceros is a monster. He tosses his huge, horned nose, sniffs and snorts and lowers his head for the charge like a wild boar. Knowing that he sees badly and charges straight, a skilled horseman can dodge him. A lion leaps over him, tucks his tail between his legs and sneaks away. An elephant that stands twice as high, often weighs but very little more, and is no match at all for this big brute. The rhinoceros can run his nose under the elephant's body and kill him with one stroke of his dagger horn.
Here is something about the rhinoceros that is very interesting. Thousands and thousands of years ago enormous hairy rhinoceroses with two nose-horns and shaggy manes, roamed over all the colder parts of Europe and America with the giant hairy elephant. The bones of a great many of them have been dug up on the banks of the Upper Missouri River. Just think! Enormous two-horned andtwo-tusked woolly beasts, bigger and fiercer than any elephants and rhinoceroses of today, may have uprooted trees and cropped wild grass on the very pasture where your pretty Jersey cow eats clover.
So there's another thing to help you remember Mr. Nose Horn. He was once an American, and might even feel at home here in some places, the hot swamps of Florida, for instance. Mr. River Horse, who is really a water-pig, is a stranger.
Now do you think you will ever forget "how to say their names, and which is which?"