This Habit Of Throwing Down Branches When
Irritated Has Been Doubted, But I Have, As Here Narrated,
Observed It Myself On At Least Three Separate Occasions.
It was
however always the female Arias who behaved in this way, and it
may be that the male,
Trusting more to his great strength and his
powerful canine teeth, is not afraid of any other animal, and
does not want to drive them away, while the parental instinct of
the female leads her to adopt this mode of defending herself and
her young ones.
In preparing the skins and skeletons of these animals, I was much
troubled by the Dyak dogs, which, being always kept in a state of
semi-starvation, are ravenous for animal food. I had a great iron
pan, in which I boiled the bones to make skeletons, and at night
I covered this over with boards, and put heavy stones upon it;
but the dogs managed to remove these and carried away the greater
part of one of my specimens. On another occasion they gnawed away
a good deal of the upper leather of my strong boots, and even ate
a piece of my mosquito-curtain, where some lamp-oil had been
spilt over it some weeks before.
On our return down the stream, we had the fortune to fall in with
a very old male Mias, feeding on some low trees growing in the
water. The country was flooded for a long distance, but so full
of trees and stumps that the laden boat could not be got in among
them, and if it could have been we should only have frightened
the Mias away.
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