Word Finder - arboreal

definition

Any tree-dwelling creature.

definition

Of, relating to, or resembling a tree.

definition

Living in or among trees.

Its arboreal vegetation is richer both in genera and species than that corresponding to it in the Old World.

Long-tailed, terrestrial and arboreal forms. The tree-snakes are mostly green above with the under parts white or yellow.

A distinct sub-family, Lophiomyinae, is represented by the Central African arboreal spiny rats, Lophiomys, of which there are two or three species.

Of Quadrumana there are about fifty species in Brazil, all arboreal, thirty-eight of which inhabit the Amazon region.

Some are more or less aquatic, others are absolutely arboreal, others again prefer dry, sandy or rocky localities according to their food.

Alligators and crocodiles are numerous in the lagoons and rivers of the coast and the iguana is to be found everywhere throughout the tropical lowlands, the large black Ctenosura acanthinurus being partly arboreal in habit when full grown.

That it could fly is certain, and the feet show it to have been well adapted to arboreal life.

Arboreal species include the well-known opossums (Phalanger); the extraordinary tree-kangaroo of the Queensland tropics; the flying squirrel, which expands a membrane between the legs and arms, and by its aid makes long sailing jumps from tree to tree; and the native bear (Phascolarctos), an animal with no affinities to the bear, and having a long soft fur and no tail.

The sloth (Bradypus) is an arboreal animal which feeds almost exclusively on the foliage of the Cecropias.

They feed on animals which likewise lead an arboreal life, rarely on eggs.

The anthropoid apes are arboreal and confined to the Old World.

Gentleness and docility are specially characteristic of the species, even when full-grown; while in the native state its habits are thoroughly arboreal.

The 1300 to 1400 species contain terrestrial, arboreal and aquatic forms, many of which are highly specialized.

They comprise about 300 species of terrestrial, arboreal and aquatic forms, and as a group they are almost cosmopolitan, including Madagascar, but excepting new Zealand.

The majority lead an exclusively arboreal life; only a few descend to the ground in search of their food.

They prey upon every kind of arboreal animal - birds, tree-frogs, tree-lizards, &c. All seem to be diurnal, and the larger kinds attain to a length of about 4 ft.

The features by which the treesnakes are distinguished are still more developed in the whip-snakes (Dryophis), whose excessively slender body has been compared to the cord of a whip. Although arboreal, like the former, they are nocturnal in their habits, having a horizontal instead of a round pupil of the eye.

It is arboreal, bright green above; the end of the prehensile tail is usually bright red.

This tribe includes some eighteen families of terrestrial, arboreal and marsh-haunting bugs, as well as those aquatic Heteroptera that live on the surface-film of water.

The arboreal flora of Louisiana and Arkansas extends into north-eastern Texas, conformable with the Coastal Plain, where, immediately south of the Colorado river, the great pine belt of the Atlantic and Gulf coasts terminates.

What may be called typical, that is to say arboreal, squirrels are found throughout the greater part of the tropical and temperate regions of both hemispheres, although they are absent both from Madagascar and Australasia.

The larger species, as might be expected from their heavier build, are somewhat less strictly arboreal in their habits than the smaller ones.

In the Sciuridae the two main bones (tibia and fibula) of the lower half of the leg are quite separate, the tail is round and hairy, and the habits are arboreal and terrestrial.

They associate in parties and are mainly arboreal, leaping from bough to bough with an agility that suggests flying through the air.

In habits some are partially arboreal, others wholly terrestrial, and a few more or less aquatic. Among the latter, the most remarkable are the fish-eating rats (Ichthyomys) of North-western South America, which frequent streams and feed on small fish.

The majority live on broken ground, with or without much vegetation; many are arboreal and many are true desert animals, while a few are more or less aquatic; one, the leguan of the Galapagos, Amblyrhynchus, even enters the sea.

According to the very varied habits, their external appearance varies within wide limits, there being amongst the 300 species, with 50 genera, arboreal, terrestrial, burrowing and semi-aquatic forms, and even one semi-marine kind.

For example, among the land vertebrates the feet (associated with the structure of the limbs and trunk) may take one of many lines of adaptation to different media or habitat, either aquatic, terrestrial, arboreal or aerial; while the teeth (associated with the structure of the skull and jaws) also may take one of many lines of adaptation to different kinds of food, whether herbivorous, insectivorous or carnivorous.

As instances of such combinations, some of the (probably herbivorous) Eocene monkeys with arboreal limbs have teeth so difficult to distinguish from those of the herbivorous ground-living Eocene horses with cursorial limbs that at first in France and also in America they were both classed with the hoofed animals.

Rodents may be characterized as terrestrial, or in some cases arboreal or aquatic, placental mammals of small or medium size, with a milk and a permanent series of teeth, plantigrade or partially plantigrade, and generally five-toed, clawed (rarely nailed or semi hoofed) feet, clavicles or collar-bones (occasionally imperfect or rudimentary), no canine teeth, and a single pair of lower incisors, opposed by only one similar and functional pair in the upper jaw.

Indeed, despite the fact that they present much diversity of habit - some being arboreal, as the squirrels, many of which are provided with expansions of skin or parachutes on which they glide from tree to tree; some cursorial, as the hares; others jumpers, as the jerboas; others fossorial, as the mole-rats; and others aquatic, as the beavers and waterrats - no important structural modifications are correlated with such diversity of habit.

These kangaroos are largely arboreal in their habits, but they descend to the ground to feed.

In habits the binturong is nocturnal and arboreal, inhabiting forests, and living on small vertebrates, worms, insects and fruits.

With regard to climbing, the long stretch of arm and the grasp with both hands and feet contribute to the arboreal life of the apes, contrasting with what seem the mere remains of the climbing habit to be found even among forest savages.

They are all arboreal in habit, and are to be found throughout the forested lowlands and lower mountain slopes.

One of the best game-birds of the forest is the "crested curassow" (Crax alector), sometimes weighing 12 lb, which feeds on arboreal fruits and rarely comes to the ground.

It should be remembered, however, that large areas of the lowland plains have only a very limited arboreal growth.

There is also a scaly ant-eater and various species of pangolins, of arboreal habit, which live on ants.

The prevailing colour of the iguanas is green; and, as the majority of them are arboreal in their habits, such colouring is generally regarded as pro FIG.

They are timid, defenceless animals, depending for safety on the comparative inaccessibility of their arboreal haunts, and their protective colouring, which is rendered even more effective by their remaining still on the approach of danger.

Although chiefly arboreal, many of the iguanas take readily to the water; and there is at least one species, Amblyrhynchus cristatus, which leads for the most part an aquatic life.

With regard to the evolution of marsupials and placentals, it has been pointed out that the majority of modern marsupials exhibit in the structure of their feet traces of the former opposability of the thumb and great toe to the other digits; and it has accordingly been argued that all marsupials are descended from arboreal ancestors.

That is to say, he believes that, with the exception of the duckbill and the echidna, the mammalian class as a whole can lay claim to descent from small arboreal forms. This view is, of course, almost entirely based upon palaeontological considerations; and these, in the author's opinion, admit of the conclusion that all modern placental and marsupial mammals are descended from a common ancestral stock, of which the members were small in bodily size.

In all the groups which are at present arboreal, the palaeontological evidence goes to show that their ancestors were likewise so; while since, in the case of modern terrestrial forms, the structure of the wrist and ankle joints tends to approximate to the arboreal type, as we recede in time, the available evidence, so far as it goes, is in favour of Dr Matthew's contention.

His theory is that in the early Cretaceous epoch the animals of the world were mostly aerial, amphibious, aquatic or arboreal; the flora of the land being undeveloped as compared with its present state.

Accordingly, it was at this epoch that the small ancestral insectivorous mammals first forsook their arboreal habitat to try a life on the open plains, where their descendants developed on the one hand into the carnivorous and other groups, in which the toes are armed with nails or claws, and on the other into the hoofed group, inclusive of such monsters as the elephant and the giraffe.

There is the further possibility that creodonts may be directly descended from the carnivorous reptiles; a descent which if proved might introduce some difficulty with regard to the abovementioned theory as to the arboreal ancestry of mammals generally.

The tamandua anteaters, as typified by Tamandua (or Uroleptes) tetradactyla, are much smaller than the great anteater, and differ essentially from it in their habits, being mainly arboreal.

The little or two-toed anteater (Cyclopes or Cycloturus didact y lus) is a native of the hottest parts of South and Central America, and about the size of a rat, of a general yellowish colour, and exclusively arboreal in its habits.

All the dormice are small rodents (although many of them are double the size of the British species), of arboreal habits, and for the most part of squirrel-like appearance; some of their most distinctive features being internal.