THE SACRED BEETLE: THE BALL
There is no need to return to the Sacred Beetle working in the daylight
or consuming his booty underground, either alone, as usually happens,
or in the company of a guest: what I have said about this in a former
chapter is enough; and further observations would give no new
information of special interest. There is only one point which deserves
attention. This is the method of constructing the spherical pellet,
consisting merely of provisions which the Beetle collects for his own
use and conveys to an underground dining-room excavated at a convenient
spot. My present cages, which are much better arranged than those which
I had at first, enable us to watch the operation at our leisure; and
this operation will furnish data which will be of the greatest value
later in explaining the mysterious structure of the nest. Let us then
once more watch the Sacred Beetle as he busies himself with his
victuals.
I supply fresh provisions, derived from the Mule or, better, the Sheep.
The scent of the heap carries the news far and wide. The Beetles hasten
up from every direction, extending and waving the russet feathers of
their antennæ, a sign of acute excitement. Those who were dozing
underground split the sandy ceiling and sally forth from their cellars.
They are now all at the banquet, not without quarrels among neighbours,
who fight for the best bits and knock one another over with sudden
back-handers from their broad fore-legs. Things calm down; and, without
further disputes for the moment, each gets all that he can out of the
spot where he happens to be.
The foundation of the structure is, as a rule, a bit that is almost
round of itself. This is the kernel which, enlarged by successive
layers, will become the ultimate ball, the size of an apricot. Having
tested it and found it suitable, the owner leaves it as it is; or, at
other times, he may clean it a little, scraping the outside, which is
rough with bits of sand. It is now a question of constructing the ball
upon this foundation. The tools are the six-toothed rake of the
semicircular shield and the broad shovels of the fore-legs, which are
likewise armed on the outer edge with strong teeth, five in number.
Without for a moment letting go of the kernel, which is held in his
four hind-legs, more particularly those of the third, the longest pair,
the Beetle turns round slowly from side to side on the top of his
embryo pellet and selects from the heap around him the materials for
increasing its size. His sharp-edged forehead peels, cuts, digs and
rakes; his fore-legs work in unison, gathering and drawing up an armful
which is at once placed upon the central mass and patted down. A few
vigorous applications of the toothed shovels press the new layer into
position. And so, with armful after armful carefully added on top,
beneath and at the sides, the original pill grows into a big ball.
While working, the builder never leaves the dome of his edifice: he
revolves on his own axis, if he wants to give his attention to any
lateral part; to shape the lower portion, he bends down to the point
where it touches the ground; but from beginning to end the sphere never
moves on its base and the Beetle never relaxes his hold.
To obtain a perfectly round form, we need the potter’s wheel, whose
rotation makes up for our want of skill; to enlarge his snowball and
make it into the enormous sphere which he will end by being unable to
move, the schoolboy rolls it in the snow: the rolling gives it the
regularity which the direct work of the hands, guided by an
inexperienced eye, would not. More dexterous than we, the Sacred Beetle
can dispense with either rolling or rotation; he moulds his ball by
means of superadded layers, without shifting its place and without even
descending for an instant from the top of his dome to view the whole
structure from the requisite distance. The compasses of his bow-legs, a
living pair of callipers which measure and check the curve, are
sufficient for his purpose.
It is only with extreme caution, however, that I introduce these
callipers, as I am perfectly convinced, by a host of facts, that
instinct has no need of special tools. If further proof were wanted,
here it is. The male Scarab’s hind-legs are perceptibly bowed; the
female’s, on the contrary, are almost straight, though she is much the
cleverer and is able, as we shall see presently, to produce
masterpieces whose exquisite form far surpasses that of a monotonous
sphere.
If the curved compasses play but a secondary part in the matter and
perhaps no part at all, what is the guiding principle of this
sphericity? If one merely took into consideration the insect’s organism
and the circumstances in which the work is done, I see absolutely none.
We must go back farther, we must go back to the innate genius, the
instinct that guides the tool. The Scarab has a natural gift for making
spheres, just as the Hive-bee has a natural gift for making hexagonal
prisms. Both achieve geometrical perfection in their work and are
independent of any special mechanism which would force upon them the
particular shape attained.
For the time being, keep this in mind: the Sacred Beetle makes his ball
by placing next to each other armful after armful of the materials
which he has collected; he builds it up without moving it, without
turning it round. He fashions the dung with the pressure of his
fore-arms as the modeller in our studios fashions his clay with the
pressure of his thumb. And the result is not an approximate sphere,
with a lumpy surface; it is a perfect sphere, which our human
manufacturers would not disown.
The time has come for retiring with the booty so that we may bury it
farther away, at no great depth, and consume it in peace. The owner,
therefore, draws his ball out of the dung-yard; and, in accordance with
ancient usage, begins straightway to roll it about on the ground, a
little at random. Any one who was not present at the beginning and who
now saw the ball rolling along, with the insect pushing it backwards,
would naturally imagine that the round shape resulted from this method
of transport. It rolls, therefore it becomes round, even as a shapeless
lump of clay would soon become round if trundled in the same way.
Though apparently logical, the idea is erroneous in every respect: we
have just seen this perfect sphericity acquired before the ball moved
from the spot. The rolling therefore has nothing to do with this
geometrical accuracy; it merely hardens the surface into a tough crust
and polishes it a little, if only by working into the substance of the
pellet any coarse bits that might have made it rough at the beginning.
Between the pill that has been rolled for hours and the pill that is
stationary in the dung-yard there is no difference in configuration.
What is the advantage of this particular shape, which is invariably
adopted at the very outset of the work? Does the Scarab derive any
benefit from the circular form? Your spectacles would have to be made
of walnut-shells if you failed to see that the insect is brilliantly
inspired when it kneads its cake into a ball. These victuals, the
meagrest of meagre pittances from the point of view of nourishment, for
the Sheep’s fourfold stomach has already extracted pretty nearly all
the assimilable matter, have to make up in quantity for what they lack
in quality.
It is the same with various other Dung-beetles. They are all insatiable
gluttons; they all need a much larger amount of food than their modest
dimensions would lead us to suspect. The Spanish Copris, no bigger than
a good-sized hazel-nut, accumulates underground, for a single meal, a
pie as big as my fist; the Stercoraceous Geotrupes hoards in his hole a
sausage nine inches long and as wide as the neck of a claret-bottle.
These mighty eaters have an easy time of it. They establish themselves
immediately under the heap dropped by some standing Mule. Here they dig
passages and dining-rooms. The provisions are at the door of the house;
they form a roof for it. All that you have to do is to bring them in,
armful by armful, taking only as much as you can carry comfortably, for
you can go on fetching more as long as you like. In this way,
scandalous quantities of food are unobtrusively stored away in peaceful
manors whose presence no outward sign betrays.
The Sacred Beetle is not so fortunate as to have his cottage underneath
the heap where the victuals are collected. He is of a vagabond
temperament; and, when his work is over, he has no great inclination
for the company of those arrant thieves, his kinsmen. He has therefore
to travel to a distance with what he has secured, in quest of a site
where he can establish himself alone. His stock of provisions, it is
true, is comparatively modest: it is not to be mentioned in the same
breath as the Copris’ enormous cakes or the Geotrupes’ fat sausages. No
matter: modest though it be, its weight and bulk are too much for the
strength of any Beetle that might think of carrying it direct. It is
too heavy, ever so much too heavy, for him to take between his legs and
fly away with, nor could he possibly drag it, gripped in his mandibles.
If the hermit, eager to withdraw from the world, wished to make use of
direct means of conveyance, there would be only one method by which he
could accumulate in his far-off cell food enough for even a single day:
that would be to carry load after load on the wing, each load being
proportionate to his strength. But what a number of journeys that would
involve! What a lot of time would be wasted in this piecemeal
harvesting! Besides, when he went back, would he not find the table
already cleared? Think of the number of guests who were giving it their
attention! The opportunity is a good one; it may not occur again for a
long while. We must make the most of it without delay; the thing to do
is to secure enough now to stock our larder for at least a day.
But how to set about it? Nothing could be simpler. What we cannot carry
we drag; what we cannot drag we cart by rolling it along, as witness
all our wheeled conveyances. The Sacred Beetle therefore chooses the
sphere as a means of transport. It is the best shape of all for
rolling; it needs no axle-tree; it adapts itself admirably to the
diverse inequalities of the ground and, at each point of its surface,
provides the necessary leverage for the least expenditure of effort.
Such is the mechanical problem which the pill-roller solves. The
spherical form of his treasure is not the effect of the rolling: it
precedes it; it is modelled precisely with a view to that method of
conveyance, which is to make the carriage of the heavy load feasible.
The Sacred Beetle is a passionate lover of the sun, whose image he
copies in the radiating notches of his rounded shield. He needs the
bright light in order to make the most of the heap whence he extracts
first provisions and next materials for nest-building. The other
Dung-beetles—Geotrupes, Copres, Onites, Onthophagi—for the most part
have dark, mysterious habits; they work unseen under the roof of
excrement; they do not begin their quest until night is at hand and the
last glimmer of twilight is fading. The more trustful Scarab both seeks
and finds amid the gladness of the noonday sun; he works his bit of
ground quite openly and reaps his harvest in the hottest and brightest
hours of the day. His ebon breastplate is glittering on top of the heap
at times when there is naught to indicate the presence of numerous
fellow-workers, belonging to other genera, who are busy underneath,
carving themselves their share of the lower strata. Darkness for
others, but for him the light!
This love of the unscreened sun has its blissful side, as the insect,
drunk with heat, shows from time to time by exultant transports; but it
has also certain disadvantages. I have never witnessed any quarrel at
harvest-time between next-door neighbours, when these were Copres or
Geotrupes. Working in the dark, each is ignorant of what is happening
beside him. The rich morsel secured by one of them cannot arouse the
envy of his neighbours, since it is not perceived. This perhaps
explains the pacific relations among Dung-beetles who work in the
gloomy depths of the heap.
My suspicions are not unfounded. Robbery, the execrable right of the
strongest, is not the exclusive prerogative of the human brute: animals
also practise it; and the Sacred Beetle is a notorious offender. As the
work is done in the open, every one knows or is able to find out what
his companions are doing. They are mutually envious of each other’s
pills; and scuffles take place between proprietors wishing to leave the
yard and plunderers who find it more convenient to rob their fellows
than to set to work and knead loaves for themselves. On guard on the
top of his treasure, the owner of a ball will face his assailant, who
is trying to climb up, and push him into space with a stroke from his
stout fore-arms. The thief is flung on his back and flounders about for
a moment, but he is soon up and back again. The struggle is renewed.
Right does not always win, in which case the robber makes off with his
prize and the victim returns to the heap to make himself another pill.
It is not unusual for a third thief to appear upon the scene during the
fight and settle matters between the litigants by carrying off the
property at issue. I am inclined to think that it was affrays of this
sort that gave rise to the childish story of the Sacred Beetles who
were called to the rescue and came to lend a hand to their brothers in
distress. Brazen footpads were taken for kindly helpers.
The Sacred Beetle then is an inveterate thief; he shares the tastes of
the Bedouin Arab, his fellow-countryman in Africa; he too is addicted
to raiding. In his case, hunger and dearth, both evil counsellors,
cannot be invoked as an explanation of this moral obliquity. Provisions
are plentiful in my cages; certainly, in their days of liberty, my
captives never lived in the midst of such abundance; and yet affrays
are of frequent occurrence. They fight hotly-contested battles for the
loaves, just as though bread were lacking. Poverty has nothing to do
with it, for very often the thief abandons his booty after rolling it
for a few seconds. They steal for the pleasure of stealing. As La
Fontaine [15] well says, there is
... double profit à faire:
Son bien premièrement; et puis le mal d’autrui. [16]
In view of this propensity for thieving, what is the best thing that a
Scarab can do when he has conscientiously made his ball? Obviously, to
shun his fellows, to leave the premises and get away to a distant spot
where he can consume his provisions in the depths of some hiding-place.
This is what he does; and he loses no time in doing it: he knows his
kinsmen too well.
Here we see the necessity for an easy method of conveyance, so that
sufficient provisions may be carted in a single journey and as swiftly
as possible. The Sacred Beetle likes working in the bright light, in
the sunshine. His profits therefore, made in full view of everybody,
are no secret to any of the workers who have hurried to the same heap.
Thus is envy kindled; thus it becomes imperative to retire to a
distance, in order to avoid being robbed. This speedy retreat demands a
convenient means of transport; and that is obtained by the spherical
form given to the materials collected.
Here is the conclusion, unexpected but very logical and I would even
say obvious: the Sacred Beetle shapes his provisions into a ball
because he is an ardent lover of the sun. The various Dung-beetles who
work in broad daylight, the Gymnopleuri and Sisyphi of my district,
conform to the same mechanical principle: they all know the advantages
of a sphere, the best rolling-apparatus; they all practise the art of
pill-making. The other Dung-beetles, who work in the dark, do nothing
of the kind: their accumulations of food are shapeless.
Life in the vivarium supplies us with some other facts which are not
undeserving of the commentator’s attention. We have said that, when
fresh provisions are supplied, the Sacred Beetles who are roaming about
come running up eagerly to the smoking fare. The rich effluvia also
speedily attract those who are slumbering in their burrows. Little
mounds of sand pop up here and there, cracking as though for an
eruption, and we see new guests emerge, wiping the dust from their eyes
with the flat of their feet. Neither their dozing in that underground
room nor the thick roof of their dwelling has succeeded in foiling
their keenness of scent: those who have had to unearth themselves reach
the lump almost as quickly as the others.
These details remind us of certain facts noted, not without surprise,
by a host of observers on the sunny beaches at Cette, Palavas, the
Golfe Juan and the North African coast, down to the lonely Sahara. Here
the Sacred Beetle and his kinsmen—the Half-spotted Scarab, the
Pock-marked Scarab and others—swarm, becoming more vigorous and more
active in proportion as the climate grows hotter. They abound; and yet
very often not one shows himself; the entomologist’s practised eye
fails to discover a single specimen.
But now see things change. Seized with an urgent physiological need,
you leave your party unobtrusively and retire behind the bushes. You
have hardly stood up, hardly begun to adjust your dress,
when—whoosh!—here comes one, here come three, here come ten, appearing
suddenly you know not whence, and swoop upon the provender. Have they
hastened from afar, these bustling scavengers? Certainly not. Had they
been apprised at a great distance by their sense of smell, which is not
in itself impossible, they would not have had time to reach the quite
recent windfall so promptly. It follows, therefore, that they were
close by, within a radius of ten or twenty yards, hidden underground
and dozing. A scent that is ever awake, even in the lethargy of sleep,
told them, down in their burrows, of the happy event; and, splitting
their ceilings, they hurry up forthwith. In less time than the incident
takes to relate, a swarming population enlivens what was but now a
desert.
A keen and vigilant scent is the Beetle’s, we must admit; a scent which
is always in operation. The Dog smells the truffle through the soil,
but he is awake; the pill-roller smells his favourite fare through the
ground in the opposite direction, but he is asleep. Which of the two
has the subtler scent?
Science flings wide her net, welcoming even filth; and truth soars at
heights where nothing can soil her. The reader will therefore be good
enough to excuse certain details which cannot be avoided in a history
of the Dung-beetle; he will show some indulgence for what has gone
before and what will follow. The revolting workshop of the insect that
manipulates ordure will lead perhaps to loftier ideas than would the
perfumer’s factory with its jasmine and patchouli.
I have accused the Sacred Beetle of being an insatiable gormandizer. It
is time to prove what I said. In my cages, which are too small to allow
of much pill-rolling, my boarders often scorn to accumulate provisions
and confine themselves to eating where they are. It is a good
opportunity for us: the meal taken in public will tell us better than
the underground banquet what a Dung-beetle’s stomach can do.
On a very still and sultry day—these are the conditions most favourable
to my anchorites’ gastronomic joys—I observe one of the diners in the
open air, from eight o’clock in the morning until eight o’clock at
night. Watch in hand, I time the glutton. He appears to have come
across a morsel greatly to his taste, for, during those twelve hours,
he never stops feasting, but remains glued to the table, absolutely
stationary. At eight o’clock in the evening, I pay him a last visit.
His appetite seems undiminished; I find him in as fine fettle as at the
start. The banquet then must have gone on some time longer, until the
dish had disappeared entirely. In fact, next morning there was no sign
of my Beetle; and, of the sumptuous repast begun on the previous day,
naught remained but crumbs.
To eat the clock round is no small feat of gluttony; but the present
instance shows a much more remarkable feat of digestion. While matter
is continuously being chewed and swallowed by the insect in front, it
is reappearing, no less continuously, behind, deprived of its nutritive
particles and spun into a thin black cord, similar to cobbler’s thread.
The Scarab never evacuates except at table, so quickly are his
digestive operations performed. The wire-drawing apparatus begins to
work at the first few mouthfuls; it ceases soon after the last. Without
a break from beginning to end of the meal, the slender cord, ever
appended to the discharging orifice, goes on piling itself into a heap
which can easily be unrolled so long as there is no sign of
desiccation.
The working is as regular as that of a chronometer. Every minute, or
rather, to be exact, every four-and-fifty seconds, a discharge takes
place and the thread is lengthened by three to four millimetres. [17]
At long intervals I employ my tweezers, remove the cord and unroll the
mass along a graduated rule, in order to measure the amount produced.
The total for twelve hours is 2.88 metres. [18] As the meal and its
necessary complement, the work of the digestive apparatus, went on for
some time longer after my last visit, which was paid at eight o’clock
in the evening by lantern-light, my Beetle must have spun an unbroken
stercoraceous cord well over three yards in length.
Given the diameter and the length of the thread, it is easy to
calculate its volume. Nor is it difficult to arrive at the exact volume
of the insect by measuring the quantity of water which it displaces
when immersed in a narrow cylinder. The figures thus obtained are not
devoid of interest: they tell us that, at a single bout of eating, in a
dozen hours, the Sacred Beetle digests very nearly his own bulk in
food. What a stomach! And, above all, what rapidity, what power of
digestion! From the very first mouthfuls, the residuum forms itself
into a thread that stretches and stretches indefinitely as long as the
meal lasts. In that amazing laboratory, which perhaps never puts up its
shutters, unless it be when victuals are lacking, the material merely
passes through, is at once treated by the stomach’s reagents and at
once exhausted. One may well believe that an apparatus which sanifies
filth so quickly has some part to play in the public health. We shall
have occasion to return to this important subject.