212) on the manner in which the short-tusked Mooknah variety attacks
other elephants.)
Very few male quadrupeds possess weapons of two distinct kinds
specially adapted for fighting with rival males. The male muntjac-deer
(Cervulus), however, offers an exception, as he is provided with horns
and exserted canine teeth. But we may infer from what follows that one
form of weapon has often been replaced in the course of ages by
another. With ruminants the development of horns generally stands in an
inverse relation with that of even moderately developed canine teeth.
Thus camels, guanacoes, chevrotains, and musk-deer, are hornless, and
they have efficient canines; these teeth being always of smaller size
in the females than in the males. The Camelidae have, in addition to
their true canines, a pair of canine-shaped incisors in their upper
jaws. (31. Owen, Anatomy of Vertebrates, vol. iii. p. 349.) Male deer
and antelopes, on the other hand, possess horns, and they rarely have
canine teeth; and these, when present, are always of small size, so
that it is doubtful whether they are of any service in their battles.
In Antilope montana they exist only as rudiments in the young male,
disappearing as he grows old; and they are absent in the female at all
ages; but the females of certain other antelopes and of certain deer
have been known occasionally to exhibit rudiments of these teeth. (32.
See Ruppell (in Proc. Zoolog. Soc. Jan. 12, 1836, p. 3) on the
canines in deer and antelopes, with a note by Mr. Martin on a female
American deer. See also Falconer ( Palaeont. Memoirs and Notes, vol.
i. 1868, p. 576) on canines in an adult female deer. In old males of
the musk-deer the canines (Pallas, Spic. Zoolog. fasc. xiii. 1779, p.
18) sometimes grow to the length of three inches, whilst in old females
a rudiment projects scarcely half an inch above the gums.) Stallions
have small canine teeth, which are either quite absent or rudimentary
in the mare; but they do not appear to be used in fighting, for
stallions bite with their incisors, and do not open their mouths wide
like camels and guanacoes. Whenever the adult male possesses canines,
now inefficient, whilst the female has either none or mere rudiments,
we may conclude that the early male progenitor of the species was
provided with efficient canines, which have been partially transferred
to the females. The reduction of these teeth in the males seems to have
followed from some change in their manner of fighting, often (but not
in the horse) caused by the development of new weapons.
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