TRAP, a mechanical device for snaring or catching any thing, and especially wild animals. The term trap is also used to designate a wooden instrument, shaped something like a shoe, used in playing trap-ball; a machine used for throwing clay pigeons or balls into the air ; a bent or partitioned chamber, as in a drain pipe (see PLUMBING), in which the liquid forms a seal to prevent the passage of sewer gas, etc. ; and the term has been used colloquially to designate a light horse carriage.
Trap is derived from O.E. treppe or frappe, properly a step, as that on which an animal places its foot and is caught, cf. Ger. Treppe, a flight of stairs. Traps for animals are of great antiquity and no savage people has ever been discovered, whatever its cul ture, that did not possess some variety of snare.
In the most primitive form of wild animal trap no mecha nism need be present, e.g., a cavity into which the animal walks, as the pitfall of the Arabs and Africans or the snow-hole of the Es kimos. Dr. 0. T. Mason has divided traps into three classes: enclosing traps, which imprison the victim without injury; ar resting traps, which seize the victim without killing it, unless it be caught by the neck or round the lungs; and killing traps, which crush, pierce or cut to death.
Enclosing traps include the pen, cage, pit and door-traps. Pen traps are represented by the fences built in Africa into which ante lopes and other animals are driven ; and by fish-seines and pound nets. Among cage-traps may be mentioned bird-cones filled with corn and smeared with bird-lime, which adhere to the bird's head, blinding it and rendering its capture easy; the fish-trap and lobster-pot; and the coop-traps, of which the turkey-trap is an example. This consists of a roofed ditch ending in a cul-de-sac into which the bird is led by a row of grains of corn. Over the further end a kind of coop is built ; the bird, instead of endeavour ing to retrace its steps, always seeks to escape upward and remains cooped. Pitfalls include not only those dug in the earth, at the bottom of which knives and spears are often fixed, but also several kinds of traps for small animals. One of these consists of a box
near the top of which a platform is hung, in such a way that, when the animal leaps upon it to secure the bait it is precipitated into the bottom of the box, while the platform automatically swings back into place.
The door-traps range in size from the immense cage with slid ing door in which such beasts as tigers are caught, to the common box-trap for mice or squirrels, the door of which falls when the spindle upon which the bait is fixed is moved. Four classes of arresting traps are : the mesh, the set-hook, the noose and the clutch. The mesh-traps include the mesh and thong toils used of old for the capture of the lion and other large game, and the gill net in the meshes of which fish are caught by the gills. To the set hook division are reckoned the set-lines of the angler, several kinds of trawls and the toggle or gorge attached to a line, which the animal, bird or fish swallows only to be held prisoner. The noose trap class is h very extensive one. The simplest examples are the common slip-noose snares of twine, wire or horsehair, set for birds or small mammals either on their feeding grounds or runways, the victim being caught by the neck, body or foot as it tries to push through the noose. When the noose is used with bait it is generally attached to a stout sapling, which is bent over and kept from springing back by some device of the "figure-4" kind. This is con structed of three pieces of wood, one the horizontal spindle on which the bait is placed, one the upright driven into the ground, and the third the connecting cross-piece, fitted to the others so loosely that only the strain of the elastic sapling keeps the trap together. When the victim tries to secure the bait he dislodges the cross-piece and is caught by the noose, which is spread on the ground under the bait or is so arranged as to encircle the neck.