The domestic animals of the Nicobarese are swine, cats, fowls, and dogs, the latter generally of the pariah variety; but now and again in the southern islands a mongrel chow is met with, a cross between the chow and some animal brought thither by the Chinese junks. All are the descendants of introduced species. They are fed on little else but coconut, and support life on this and the results of their own foraging. Pigeons, parrots, and monkeys are occasionally to be seen in captivity, but the natives have not attempted to systematically utilise the megapode; all the laying-places near the villages are, however, known, and periodically overhauled for eggs.[172] Weapons, in the strict sense of the word, do not exist now among the Nicobarese; they possess no shields, swords, clubs, or spears for warlike purposes only. The Burmese _dáo_, their most common implement--obtained from the ship-traders--is used for everyday purposes and for house-building, agriculture, canoe-fitting, etc., while the spears and harpoons used for pig-killing, cattle-hunting, and fishing are nearly all constructed by attaching a suitable haft to the variously shaped heads which are made locally. A fishing spear of native make is of the many-pronged wooden type (Mal., _s'rempang_) common throughout the East--a bunch of diverging barbed skewers spliced into a haft with lashings of cord or rattan. The Shom Pe[.n] manufacture a javelin or dart, which is used indiscriminately for warfare or the chase as occasion may require; it is made of a single piece of heavy wood, and is possibly the same kind of implement as was in general use among the Nicobarese before the introduction of iron heads.[173] Fifty and more years ago, the natives obtained numbers of muskets--of which they were much afraid--by barter with European traders; but recently the Indian Government has prohibited the possession of these weapons, and whenever any are discovered they are immediately confiscated. [Illustration: 1. Shom Pe[.n] Spear (Great Nicobar). 2 and 3, "_Hanoi cha_," Canoe Decorations for bow, stern, and outrigger (Kar Nicobar). 4, Turtle Spear. 5 and 6, Wooden Fishing Spears. 7, Ornamental Canoe Stern-piece, "_Misoka ap_" (Kar Nicobar). 8, 9, and 10, Iron Fishing Spears.] In common with the other Malayan peoples, they do not seriously employ the bow and arrow. Crossbows are in use among them for shooting birds, but it is evident that such implements are not the invention of the natives. The stock is fashioned like a gun-butt, and the arrow rests in a groove running along the top of the fore-end, and is kept in position by means of three half-hoop pegs of brass wire. The bow is perfectly round in section, tapering towards the ends, and the release is of the string and peg variety, hitching over the top of the trigger. The arrows, which are unfeathered and half the diameter of a lead pencil, have for point a sharpened nail attached by a wrapping of sheet-tin.