Mammals

"The bottle-nosed whale is a furlong long"

"I really didn't dare to send it across the Atlantic — the whales are so inconsiderate. They'd have been sure to want to borrow it to show to the little whales, quite forgetting that the salt water would be sure to ruin it."

"In our own lifetime we are witnessing a startling alteration of climate…Activities in the nonhuman world also reflect the warming of the Arctic-the changed habits and migrations of many fishes, birds, land mammals, and whales."

"I, I wish you could swim Like the dolphins, like dolphins can swim Though nothing, nothing will keep us together We can beat them, forever and ever Oh, we can be heroes just for one day."

"Dolphins are not automatic air-breathers like we are. Every breath is a conscious effort. If life becomes too unbearable, the dolphins just take a breath and they sink to the bottom. They don't take the next breath."

"Round thee sport in joyous rout Lightly leaping, gleaming, glancing, Tossing in their finny dancing Bristly mane and flattened snout, Dolphins, whom the Muse enthrals— Playmates ’neath the briny waters Chasing Amphitrite’s daughters In the Nereids’ halls."

"No more exulting o'er the buoyant sea High shall I raise my head in gambols free; Nor by some gallant ship breathe out the air, Pleas'd with my own bright image figur'd there. The storm's black mist has forc'd me to the land, And laid me lifeless on this couch of sand."

"[O]n the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much — the wheel, New York, wars and so on — whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man — for precisely the same reasons."

"Though pleased to see the dolphins play, I mind my compass and my way."

"... On a research trip in , I broke my foot. Undeterred, the next day I entered the water with my swollen foot. I was with about a dozen other s. Two s approached us and headed straight for me. I felt an intense "buzz" of , which vibrated through my injured foot then dissipated as it travelled up my leg. The dolphins then moved on to investigate the rest of our group, as if my foot was the only interesting thing about me. No one else indicated that they were echolocated on during that encounter."

"And yet I swear by the sacred name of my creator that it was true. It was true sunshine; the true music; the true splash of the fountains from the mouth of stone dolphins."

"‘Son, son!’ said Mother Jaguar ever so many times, graciously waving her tail, ‘a Hedgehog is a Hedgehog, and can’t be anything but a Hedgehog; and a Tortoise is a Tortoise, and can never be anything else.’"

"Dada doubts everything. Dada is an armadillo. Everything is Dada, too. Beware of Dada."

"For a single armadillo, you will own, On Salisbury Plain in summer is comparatively rare, And a pair of them is practically unknown."

"The ancient owls' nest must have burned. Hastily, all alone, a glistening armadillo left the scene, rose-flecked, head down, tail down"

"I've never seen a Jaguar, Nor yet an Armadill- o dilloing in his armour, And I s'pose I never will, Unless I go to Rio These wonders to behold-- Roll down--roll down to Rio-- Roll really down to Rio! Oh, I'd love to roll to Rio Some day before I'm old!"

"Like two plough-bulls ye move along in traces, and seek like eager guests your bidder's banquet. Ye are like glorious envoys mid the people: like bulls, approach the place where ye are watered."

"Anas b. Malik reported that some people belonging (to the tribe) of 'Uraina came to Allah's Messenger (may peace be upon him) at Medina, but they found its climate uncongenial. So Allah's Messenger (may peace be upon him) said to them: If you so like, you may go to the camels of Sadaqa and drink their milk and urine. They did so and were all right."

"Narrated Anas: Some people from the tribe of 'Ukl came to the Prophet and embraced Islam. The climate of Medina did not suit them, so the Prophet ordered them to go to the (herd of milch) camels of charity and to drink, their milk and urine (as a medicine)."

""A tradtionalist told me from one who had told him from Muhammad b. Talha from Uthman v. Abdul-Rahman that in the raid of Muharib and B. Thalaba the apostle had captured a slave called Yasar, and he put him in charge of his milch-camels to shepherd them in the neighborhood of al-Jamma. Some men of Qays of Kubba of Bajila came to the apostle suffering from an epidemic and enlarged spleens, and the apostle told them that if they went to the milch camels and drank their milk and their urine they would recover, so off they went."

"Looking athwart the burning flats, far off Seen by the high-necked camel on the verge Journeying southward"

"The voice of any camel has a wide range in pessimistic eloquence; beyond question a camel has a vocabulary and can say many things, all of them discontented."

"Hamlet: Do you see yonder cloud that's almost in shape of a camel? Polonius: By the mass, and 'tis like a camel, indeed."

"And in the grazing herd he made a hundred camels bleat for me, And twenty hundred mid the white."

"Steeds sixty thousand and ten thousand kine, and twenty hundred camels I obtained; Ten hundred brown in hue, and other ten red in three spots: in all, ten thousand kine."

"Kakuha hath reached up to heaven, bestowing buffaloes yoked in fours, And matched in fame the Yadavas."

"As such, O Aśvins, find for me my share of new-presented gifts, As Kasu, Cedi's son, gave me a hundred head of buffaloes, and ten thousand kine."

"Thee, then, O Pūṣan, like a swift one on his way, I urge with lauds that thou mayst make the foemen flee, drive, camel-like, our foes afar. As I, a man, call thee, a God, giver of bliss, to be my Friend, So make our loudly-chanted praises glorious, in battles make them glorious."

"The camel has a single hump, The dromedary, two; Or else the other way around; I'm never sure. Are you?"

"'Take my camel, dear,' said my aunt Dot, as she climbed down from this animal on her return from High Mass."

"A camel's hump is an ugly lump"

"Some days past I have found a curious confirmation of the fact that what is truly native can and often does dispense with local color; I found this confirmation in Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Gibbon observes that in the Arabian book par excellence, in the Koran, there are no camels; I believe if there were any doubt as to the authenticity of the Koran, this absence of camels would be sufficient to prove it is an Arabian work. It was written by Mohammed, and Mohammed, as an Arab, had no reason to know that camels were especially Arabian; for him they were part of reality, he had no reason to emphasize them; on the other hand, the first thing a falsifier, a tourist, an Arab nationalist would do is have a surfeit of camels, caravans of camels, on every page; but Mohammed, as an Arab, was unconcerned: he knew he could be an Arab without camels. I think we Argentines can emulate Mohammed, can believe in the possibility of being Argentine without abounding in local color."

"CAMEL, n. A quadruped (the Splaypes humpidorsus) of great value to the show business. There are two kinds of camels -- the camel proper and the camel improper. It is the latter that is always exhibited."

"It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven."

"An elephant can trumpet and shake the earth but not the self-possession of the ants who hold it."

"Keep five yards from a carriage, ten yards from a horse, and a hundred yards from an elephant; but the distance one should keep from a wicked man cannot be measured."

"I suffer from Schizophrenia It comes on me in spells Sometimes I'm King of Armenia At others I'm Orson Welles. I tell them I'm Napoleon and all that sort of bunk They never guess that all the time I'm laughing up me trunk!"

"I'm an Introverted, Elephocentric, Hypochondriac, And I'll stick in the Elephant's nursing home Till I get me memory back!"

"A elephant's life is tedious, laborious and slow; I've been an elephant all me life so I blooming well ought to know."

"With four parameters I can fit an elephant, and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk."

"I saw a peanut stand, heard a rubber band, I saw a needle that winked its eye. But I think I will have seen everything When I see an elephant fly.I saw a front porch swing, heard a diamond ring, I saw a polka-dot railroad tie. But I think I will have seen everything When I see an elephant fly.I seen a clothes horse, he r'ar up and buck And they tell me that a man made a vegetable truck I didn't see that, I only heard But just to be sociable I'll take your wordI heard a fireside chat, I saw a baseball bat And I just laughed till I thought I'd die But I'd be done see'n about everything when I see an elephant fly."

"The elephant hath joints, but none for courtesy: his legs are legs for necessity, not for flexure."

"That is like people blind by birth in, when viewing an elephant."

"Women and elephants never forget an injury."

"The people deck him like a docile king of elephants."

"Early one morning the sub-inspector at a police station the other end of the town rang me up on the phone and said that an elephant was ravaging the bazaar. Would I please come and do something about it?"

"Not that I think much depends On how we treat our feathered friends, Or hold the wrinkled elephant A nobler creature than my aunt. It's simply that I'm sure I can Get on without my fellow man."

"Elephant-ear-witnesses-to-be of hymns and glorias, these ministrants all gray or gray with white on legs or trunk, are a pilgrims'pattern of revery not reverence — a religious procession without any priests, the centuries-old carefullest unrehearsed play."

"Th' unwieldy elephant, To make them mirth, us'd all his might, and wreathed His lithe proboscis."

"When you have got an elephant by the hind leg, and he is trying to run away, it's best to let him run."