Word: pouching
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Name: diprotodon. Age: uncertain. Domicile: Australia. Physical characteristics: looks like a rhinoceros but has a pouch like a kangaroo. These are the vital specifications of one of the strangest prehistoric beasts known. Henceforth, thanks to Ruben A. Stirton, professor of paleontology at the University of California, scientists will learn a lot more about the diprotodon than the few fragmentary facts which, in the past, enabled them to put together only a vague sort of passport picture...
...strange animal that Explorer Vicente Yañez Pinzón brought home from the new world in 1500 astonished the Spanish court. Their Majesties Ferdinand and Isabella ran their royal fingers through the soft-furred pouch on the beast's belly and marveled at such a freak of nature. In that age of exaggerations, the little cat-sized creature grew into weird shapes in the minds of men. To the Venetian court reporter, Peter Martyr, it looked like a "monstrous beaste with a snowte lyke a foxe, a tayle lyke a marmasette, eares lyke a batte, handes lyke...
Marsupial Secrets.The female possum's habit of licking her pouch before giving birth is the source of what Dr. Hartman considers several preposterous possum legends. But for all its stupidity, the possum, in its sex life, is much like other mammals. After only 12½ days' gestation, the mother props herself into a sitting position and delivers a large litter of tiny (20 can fit into a teaspoon), wormlike young. Still little more than squirming, pink embryos, the baby possums clamber upward over their mother's soft, warm underbelly and into the pouch that opens and closes...
...this prying into marsupial secrets, says Dr. Hartman, is more than idle curiosity or an effort to explain away old folklore. In the possum's pouch, science can study living embryos outside the womb. Thus, from the thick-witted possum, man may learn some lessons on how to care for his own premature young...
Ankle-deep in the heather of a north German moor, the green-clad hunter carefully quartered the area until he found a rabbit hole. Noting fresh tracks, he solemnly commented: "Das ist gut." From a leather pouch on his hip he brought out a sleek, sausage-shaped ferret named Mookie. The three tiny bells on his neck tinkling, Mookie was launched down the rabbit hole. The Jagermeister (hunt master) watched intently as Mookie's master raised his gauntleted left arm and spoke soothingly to the malevolent-looking hawk tethered to his wrist. "Steady, Diana. Steady, pretty girl," whispered...