The Universal KinshipMoore, J. Howard (John Howard)
Philosophy
The Universal Kinship
Moore, J. Howard (John Howard)
Evolution; Human beings; Sociology
From the marsupials developed the placental mammals, animals so
called because their young are developed within the parental body in
association with a peculiar nourishing organ called the placenta.
From the herbivorous marsupials developed the almost toothless
edentates, the rodents, or gnawing animals, the sirenians, the
cetaceans, and the hoofed animals, or ungulates. The sirenians are
fish-like animals with two flippers, and are often called sea-cows.
They resemble whales in many respects, and are sometimes classed
with them. They are plant-eaters exclusively, and are found grazing
along the bottoms of tropical estuaries and rivers. They have tiny
eyes, teeth fitted for grinding (not spike-like as in the whales),
and a strong affection for their young, the mother, when pursued,
often carrying her little one under her flippers. An immense
sirenian, known as Steller’s manatee, was discovered on the
Behring Islands, along the Kamschatka coast, in 1741. Twenty-seven
years afterwards not one of them was left, all having been murdered
by the Russian sailors. The sirenians are probably degenerate forms
of land quadrupeds, having lost their hind-limbs and developed the
fish-like shape in adapting themselves to aquatic conditions. They
appear first in the Eocene Age.
Among the most interesting derivatives of the herbivorous
marsupials, because the most aberrant, are the whales. They are true
mammals—have warm blood, breathe the air with lungs, and suckle
their young like other mammals. But, like the sirenians, they live
in the surface of the waters, and have flippers and a fish-like tail
and form. They differ from the sirenians, however, in being
carnivorous, in having inguinal instead of pectoral milk glands, and
in being structurally less like quadrupeds. They probably
degenerated from land quadrupeds during the Jurassic period, and,
owing to their longer residence in the waters, have become further
removed from the quadrupedal type than the sirenians. Whales have
two limbs, the hind-limbs having disappeared as a result of the
pre-eminent development of the tail. The tails of whales and
sirenians are flattened horizontally, not vertically, as in fishes.
Out of generalised forms of hoofed animals now extinct developed the
odd-toed and even-toed races of existing ungulates. The original
ungulates had five hoofs on each foot, and were highly generalised
in their structure. From these original five-toed forms have arisen
the variously hoofed and variously structured tribes of existing
ungulates: the five-toed elephant, the four-toed tapir and
hippopotamus, the three-toed rhinoceros, the two-toed camel, sheep,
swine, deer, antelope, giraffe, and ox, and the one-toed horse and
zebra.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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