The Describer's Dictionary: A Treasury of Terms & Literary Quotations (28 page)

BOOK: The Describer's Dictionary: A Treasury of Terms & Literary Quotations
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VIVIAN J. WILSON,
Orphans of the Wild
 
 
Caracals flicking their long sharp-tipped and slender ears are a delight to watch. They are often pitch-black with a long tassel of hair. The outside of the ears is covered with silver hair while the inside is light grey. A black spot on either side of the face near the muzzle, and a black line from the eye to the nose, with some white on the chin and at the base of the ear, make the caracal’s face one of the most beautiful of the African felines.
VIVIAN J. WILSON,
Orphans of the Wild
 
hare
leporine, lagomorphic
hawk
acciptrine
hedgehog
erinaceous
hen
gallinaceous
hermit crab
pagurian
heron
grallatory
herring
clupeoid
hippopotamus
hippopotamic
hog
suilline
horse
equine, caballine, chevaline
housefly
muscid, musciform
hyena
hyenic, hyaenic
insect
entomologic, insectaean, insectival
jellyfish
acalephan
kangaroo
macropodine, macropoid
king crab
limuloid
lamb
agnine
 
 
A litter of cone-flakes on a forest path betrays the red squirrel sleeping on a branch above. With its tufted ears and tail of fine hairs curled over its back and projecting an inch in front of its face, it resembles a large hairy fir cone.
RICHARD PERRY,
Life in Forest and Jungle
 
 
The 4-foot-long tree pangolins are almost exclusively arboreal, descending to the ground only infrequently at night. Pangolins—those elongated armadillos—have been described as mammals disguised as saurians, for their bodies and very long tails are armored with horny, leaf-shaped, sharp-edged and overlapping scales inserted into the skin by one edge and erectable like a bird’s feathers; only the face and narrow toothless muzzle, the ventral parts and the inner surface of the feet are unprotected.
RICHARD PERRY,
Life in Forest and Jungle
 
 
With rounded muzzle, short neck, backward-pointing horns and low forequarters, a duiker (the Africaans [
sic
] “diver”) slips through the shrubbery with a minimum of effort, eluding the hunting leopard by agility rather than speed, twisting and turning as it weaves through the densest undergrowth, a barely detectable gray or brown form.
RICHARD PERRY,
Life in Forest and Jungle
 
leech
hirudinoid, bdelloid
lemur
lemurine, lemuroid
leopard
pardine, feline
lion
leonine
lizard
lacertilian, lacertine, lacertian, saurian
lobster
crustacean, macrural, homarine, homaroid
lynx
lyncian
mackerel
scombrid, scombroid
manatee
sirenian, manatine, trichechine
mite, tick
acaridal, acarine
mole
talpine
mongoose
herpestine
monkey
simian, simioid, simious, pithecoid, pithecan
mosquito
culicine, culicid
moth
heterocerous
mouse
murine, murid
octopus
octopean, octopine, cephalopodous
 
 
Rich reddish-brown or vivid orange in color, with white ear-tassels, dorsal ridges of white and black hair, and short razor-sharp tusks capable of disemboweling a leopard, bush-pigs are the most spectacular of their kind.
RICHARD PERRY,
Life in Forest and Jungle
 
 
The carrier, more especially the male bird, is also remarkable from the wonderful development of the carunculated skin about the head, and this is accompanied by greatly elongated eyelids, very large external orifices to the nostrils and a wide gape of mouth.
CHARLES DARWIN,
The Origin of Species
 
 
For instance, the several species of the Chthamalinae (a subfamily of sessile cirripedes) coat the rocks all over the world in infinite numbers: they are all strictly littoral, with the exception of a single Mediterranean species, which inhabits deep water and has been found fossil in Sicily, whereas not one other species has hitherto been found in any tertiary formation....
CHARLES DARWIN,
The Origin of Species
 
 
The golden hamster hardly ever climbs, and gnaws so little that he can be allowed to run freely about the room where he will do no appreciable damage. Besides this, this animal is externally the neatest little chap, with his fat head, his big eyes, peering so cannily into the world that they give the impression that he is much cleverer than he really is, and the gaily coloured markings of his gold, black and white coat. Then his movements are so comical that he is ever and again the source of friendly laughter when he comes hurrying, as though pushed along, on his little short legs, or when he suddenly stands upright, like a tiny pillar driven into the floor and, with stiffly pricked ears and bulging eyes, appears to be on the look-out for some imaginary danger.
KONRAD LORENZ,
King Solomon’s Ring
 
ostrich
struthious, struthionine
otter
lutrine
owl
strigine
oyster
ostreoid, ostriform
panther
pantherine
parrot
psittacine, psittaceous
parrot fish
scaroid
peacock
pavonine
penguin
spheniscine, impennate
pig
porcine, suine
pigeon
peristeronic
poisonous snake
thanatophidian
porcupine
hystricoid, hystricine
porpoise
phocaenine
pouched animal
marsupial, didelphian
python
pythonic
rabbit
cunicular
 
 
Like penguins, the water-shrews looked rather awkward and ungainly on dry land but were transformed into objects of elegance and grace on entering the water. As long as they walked, their strongly convex underside made them look pot-bellied and reminiscent of an old overfed dachshund.
KONRAD LORENZ,
King Solomon ’s Ring
 
 
Wild dogs visited the pool, first two, then the whole pack. The strange bat-eared creatures circled around behind the car with curiosity, emitting that odd grunt-bark of alarm that contrasts so strangely with their birdlike twitterings of greetings and contentment. These were all good-looking animals, with shining black masks and brindle on the nape and shoulders, glossy black and yellow-silver bodies, irregularly splotched, and alert clean white-tipped tails.
PETER MATTHIESSEN,
Sand Rivers
 
 
The lead bull had imposing horns, which glinted in the sun like horns of buffalo, but such horns are ill-suited to a long sad face with odd ginger eyebrows. The wildebeest has a goat’s beard and a lion’s mane and a slanty back like a hyena; the head is too big and the tail too long for this rickety thing, and Africans say that the wildebeest is a collection of the parts that were left over after God had finished up all other creatures.
PETER MATTHIESSEN,
Sand Rivers
 
raccoon
procyanine
ram
arietine
rat
murine, murid
rattlesnake
crotaline
ray
batoid
reindeer
rangiferine
reptile
reptilian, reptiloid, herpetiform
rodent
glirine, gliriform, rodential
seacow
sirenian
seal
sphragistic, phocine, pinnepedian, otarine
shark
squaloid, squaliform, selachian
sheep
ovine
shrew
soricine, soricoid
shrimp
caridoid
skunk
mephitine
sloth
edentate
 
slug
limacine
 
 
Though her ears are high, the rhinoceros makes no move at all, there is no twitch of her loose hide, no swell or raising of the ribs, which are outlined in darker gray on the barrel flanks, as if holding her breath might render her invisible. The tiny eyes are hidden in the bags of skin, and though her head is high, extended toward us, the great hump of the shoulders rises higher still, higher even than the tips of those coarse dusty horns that are worth more than their weight in gold in the Levant. Just once, the big ears give a twitch; otherwise she remains motionless, as the two oxpeckers attending her squall uneasily, and a zebra yaps nervously back in the trees.
PETER MATTHIESSEN,
Sand Rivers
 
 
The Virginia opossum is a large rat-shaped creature, much be-whiskered, with an untidy shaggy coat, button eyes and a long naked tail which it can wrap round a branch with sufficient strength to support its own weight for a little time at least. It has a large mouth that it opens alarmingly wide to expose a great number of small sharp teeth.
DAVID ATTENBOROUGH,
Life on Earth
 
 
The most arboreal of all the lemurs—it hardly ever comes down to the ground—is a close relation of the sifaka, the indri. It is the biggest of all living lemurs with a head and body nearly a metre long. It is boldly marked with a variable black and white pattern and its tail is reduced to a tiny stump in its fur. Its legs are even longer in proportion than those of a sifaka, the big toes are widely separated from the rest and about twice the length, so that each foot resembles a huge caliper with which the animal can grasp even thick trunks.
DAVID ATTENBOROUGH,
Life on Earth
 
snail
gastropodous
snake
ophidian, sinerous, anguine, anguineous, serpentine,
anguiform
songbird
oscine
spider
arachnoid, araneiform
squirrel
sciuroid, sciurine, spermophiline
starfish
asteroidal
stork
ciconine, herodian, herodionine
swan
cygnine
tapeworm
taeniid, taenial
tick, mite
acaridal, acarine
tiger
tigerish, tigrine, tigerine, feline
tortoise
testudinal
turtle
chelonian
viper
viperine
vulture
vulturine, vulturial
wading bird
grallatory
walrus
pinniped
 
 
The smallest of the group is the mouse lemur, with a snub nose and large appealing eyes, that scampers through the thinnest twigs. The indri has a closely related noctural equivalent, the avahi, very similar in appearance and size except that its fur, instead of being black and white is grey and woolly. Oddest and most specialised of all is the aye-aye. Its body is about the size of that of an otter, it has black shaggy fur, a bushy tail and large membranous ears. One finger on each hand is enormously elongated and seemingly withered, so that it has become a bony articulated probe.
DAVID ATTENBOROUGH,
Life on Earth
 
 
Late in the afternoon a pod of twenty or so gleaming-black pilot whales, their bulbous foreheads and sickle-shaped dorsal fins unmistakable even at a distance, lazed with indifference near the
Arctic Endeavour.
BOOK: The Describer's Dictionary: A Treasury of Terms & Literary Quotations
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