MECHANISM OF LOVE
_II. Copulation
(continued).--Arthropodes.--Scorpions.--Large
aquatic crustaceans.--Small crustaceans.--The
hydrachne.--Scutilary.--Cockchafer.--Butterflies.--
Flies, etc.--Variation of animals' sexual habits._
Among insects, batrachians, and mollusks one finds the most curious
modes of fecundation and those furthest removed from the usual
mechanism of mammals; before coming to that we will give a few
examples, toward forming an idea of the sexual habits of various
species chosen from the arthropodes. In scorpions, let us say,
terrestrial representatives of aquatic crustaceans: the two sexes are
identical, genital organs usually invisible, hidden between the abdomen
and the cephalothorax, the front part of it where the head without neck
is prolonged directly into the thorax. The male is provided with two
rigid penes englobed in a sheath--double but forming a single canal;
holding the female belly to belly he inserts them in the vulva, one
branch bending to the left, the other to the right toward each of the
two oviducts. Same mechanism in crustaceans, save in the rare cases
when they are hermaphrodite. Lobsters, langousts, écrevisses, crabs,
like the scorpion, couple in a manner singularly resembling that of
humans. Curious spectacle, that of the hen lobster attacked by the
male, turned on her back, patiently permitting him to stretch over her,
enlacing her claws and his pincers! Vision of a sabbat which Callot or
Doré would only have painted in fear. Perhaps one would consider this
before opening the armoured belly of these beasts who have bred their
species among algæ, and in holes of the rocks? The genital glands of
crustaceans are excellent; people gladly eat those of the sea-anemone;
the only good part of these spiny animals. The males of the greater
crustaceans have erectile ejectory canals, rising in the form of double
prong between the forefeet; the females are correspondingly provided
with two vulvæ opening in the third sternal segment, or at the base of
the feet corresponding to this segment. Copulation is effected by quick
acts, reiterated two or three times, lasting a quarter of an hour. The
male of the fresh water prawn who swims leaning on his side, holds his
female between his claws and progresses by bounds; she is much smaller
than he is. Same mechanism in aselle and talitre or sea-flea.
There are many singularities in the sexual habits of small crustaceans,
the male bopyre lives as parasite on the female, who is four or
five times larger; oddity increased by the female herself being the
parasite of the palemon. It is she who forms the little bloatedness
which one notices, grayish when cooked, on the heads of shrimps,
turned pink. Fishermen state that this spot is a small sole, but they
also tell other yarns: for example, that anatifes, the peduncular
mussels which one sees on drift-wood are the embryos of wild-ducks,
and one noble sailor has himself seen them taking flight.[1] The
male linguatula is also smaller than the female, he has one testicle
but two long copulating organs which simultaneously penetrate the
female, ejaculating toward the two ovaries. Another small male is the
hydrachne, water acarian, two or three times smaller than the female,
he alone is provided with a tail at the end of which are his genital
organs; the female's are formed by a papilla situated beneath the belly
and marked by a white patch surrounding the sluice. The male swims, the
female comes to meet him, lifts herself obliquely and brings her white
spot into touch with her lover's caudal extremity, the junction is
accomplished. One then sees the male drag along the kicking female; the
coupling, with periods of rest, but without interruption of profound
contact continues for several days.
With insects of superior talents it is, on the contrary, the female who
carries off the male: the ant carries hers on her back, while he bends
his abdomen into a bow toward her vulva; thus weighted, she flies,
mounts, planes, then falls with him like a drop of water. He dies on
the spot, the female gets up, returns to the nest, lays, before dying.
The fetes of the ant are of the whole ant hill at once, the fall of
the lovers like a golden cascade, and the resurrection of the females
gleams in the sun like a russet foam. The scutilary is an insect
sometimes squarish or shield-shaped resembling the green wood louse,
sometimes long and cylindrical with points and lines of all colours
on its wings. One of them, scutiform, known as lineata, with red back
and black stripes, is common on umbellifera. Copulation takes place
end to end; one can see them thus, the female towing the smaller male
from leaf to leaf, from umbel to umbel.[2] The forficula also couple
end to end, fleas, whose male is smaller, couple belly to belly with
feet enlaced; the position recalling that of dragon flies is more
remarkable, in the louvette, a small insect which lives on broom, and
readily throws itself upon man: the vulva is in fact, near the mouth.
Coleoptera are given to cavalage, of duration varying from ten hours
to two days. The male cockchafer pursues the female with fervour,
he is so ardent that he often mounts other males, deceived by the
odour of rut floating in the air. He seizes the female and holds her
clamped by his forelegs and genital hooks. The union continues a day
and a night, finally the male, exhausted, falls over backward, and
still hooked by the penial pincers, is dragged along on his back
by the impassive female who moves on feeding, pulling him over the
leaves until death detaches him; then she lays and dies in her turn.
Butterflies are likewise very fervent, the males make veritable voyages
in quest of females, as Fabre has proved. They often fly coupled,
the stronger female easily carrying the male: it is a quite frequent
sight in the country, these butterflies with four wings who roll, a
little bewildered from flower to flower, drunken ships going where
the sails bid them. With flies, feminism is brought frankly into the
love mechanism. The females have the copulative apparatus; they force
their oviduct, then a veritable prong, into the male's belly; it is
the females who make the mastering gesture, the male merely grips this
gimlet with the hooks which surround his genital fent. It is this same
augur which the female uses to bore the wood, or earth or flesh where
she deposits her eggs. The coupling is end to end, and one of the
easiest to observe.
Here are enough examples to show what is permanent in the mechanism of
true copulation, and what is variable in its exterior modes. Given the
two chief pieces of the apparatus, the sword and the scabbard, nature,
as one might say, leaves it to the imagination of each specie to decide
the best manner of using them; all ways seem good if they fecundate.
Nature has still more remarkable methods, for the sexual inventions of
humanity are nearly all anterior or exterior to man. There is not one
whose model, even perfected, is not offered him by the animals, by the
most humble of animals.
If there is no general rule, if there is no one moral manner of
fecundating a female, one must recognize that the same mode is fixed
in the same specie, in the same genus or family. I do not think that
anyone has observed variation in the sexual habits of an animal; yet
acts of sheer disembarrassment being possible, one can not consider
the love method as being rigorously fixed. It has varied in social
bees, parting from the relation of the couple, the aggression of the
male, to end in the political and autocratic fecundation of a sole
female by a sole male chosen among an hundred slave favourites. The
mechanism itself must have changed with the change of the organs,
complying with corporal circumstances and with those of the milieu,
under pressure of the nervous system which demands acts without
caring for the instruments which must execute them. One finds proof
of these changes in the accidental hermaphrodism of a great number
of invertebrates and even of fishes, such as the cod, the herring,
the scomber: a fundamental change since it shifts the animal from a
superior to an inferior category; a recall to origins, doubtless,
and an indication that the species liable to such accidents are
far from being physiologically fixed. It is very probable that
analogous accidents, less accentuated, visible sometimes in exterior
malformation, invisible in their psychological influence, are the cause
of certain tendencies in contrast to the sex apparent or even real.
But this does not yet answer the main question: are there in animals,
apart from purely mechanical aberrations, erotic fantasies? One can
not answer with certainty. The animal merely follows a groove; when he
has gone through it, if he lives for another season, he merely goes
over the same ground, attentive to the same need, submitted always to
the same gestures. Very true, but the animals familiar to man or his
neighbours, the dog, the ape, perhaps the cat, are assuredly capable
of erotic fantasies; it is therefore difficult to deny this tendency
to other animals, to the so intelligent hymenoptera, for example. Who
knows, moreover, whether certain eccentric modes of copulation are not
fixed fantasies, become habit and having supplanted an anterior method,
the animal being little able to employ two customs at once?
What we have found, at least, is that the love mechanism is, in nature,
of infinite variety, and that if it appears stable in most of the fixed
species, it is, in its entirety extremely oscillating, capricious, and
fantastic.
[1] The name of these cirripedes bears witness to this superstition:
_anatife_ is the abridgement of _anatifere_, duck-bearing, latin _anas,
anatis_, "A tree equally marvelous, is that which produces barnacles,
for the fruits of this tree change into birds." (Mandeville's Travels.)
[2] This does not seem to be general. I have recently observed, on the
umbels of wild carrots, numerous couples of scutilaries, proceeding by
cavalage, the male inert, couched on the walking female, who started at
the least alarm. Form narrow, almost cylindrical; colour: orange red,
with two short black bands: strong sucker, long antennæ. Union lasting
at least a day and a night.--R. de G.