Egyptian cobras was the “asp” with which Cleopatra took her own life.
It is more probable, however, that she used an even weirder and almost
as deadly snake, the horned viper. This serpent is common on the
fringes of the Egyptian desert. It buries itself in the hot sand, only
its eyes and the top of its head being visible. Its two horns resemble
barley seed and attract birds within its reach. When disturbed it can
throw itself forward. It was called “aculum” (spear) by the Romans
because of this darting motion.
_The World of Insects_
The Roman naturalist Pliny wrote of ants in the Himalayas “the color
of a cat and as large as an Egyptian wolf.” Pliny naively had accepted
tales of travellers but the actual curiosities of the insect world are
almost as strange as anything he related. There are bugs that live in
ice, bugs that are happy only in near boiling water, snow white bugs
that dwell deep in the earth, bugs that make their homes in petroleum
pools.
None are as big as wolves, but the insect world has its giants as well
as its dwarfs. The Atlas moth of India has a wing-spread of nearly a
foot. An East Indian walking stick is 15 inches long. The Hercules
beetle of Africa sounds like an airplane in flight. Enormous forelegs,
more than twice the length of the rest of the body are characteristic
of a black wood beetle which covers a space of eight inches with all
its legs extended. A curiosity of the Malay Archipelago is a “fly with
horns.” It has protuberances on its head which suggest the horns of a
deer.
A South African fly has eyes which extend on stalks from the sides of
its head. The stalks are so long that the measurement from eye to eye
is a third more than the length of the body from head to tail.
One blood-sucking insect can distend itself with blood to more than
twelve times its original weight. As the huge meal is digested the
abdomen contracts like a deflating balloon.
The death watch beetle, standby for stories of haunted old castles,
bumps its head on the top of its tunnels in wooden walls to send a kind
of telegraphic message to its mate.
Some chalcid flies paralyze caterpillars and lay self-multiplying eggs
in their bodies. More than 2,000 larvae may be produced from a single
egg deposited in this way.
A singular ant lion, dweller near the Egyptian pyramids, has a slender
and elongated neck whose caliper jaws seem to be held at the end of an
outstretched arm. The neck, in many cases is far longer than the rest
of the body. It permits the insects to probe for prey in deep crevasses.
The goat of the insect world, the drugstore beetle, is known to consume
45 different substances, including the poisons aconite and belladonna.
Other beetles feed on cigarettes, mustard plasters and red pepper. Ants
have shown themselves resistant to cyanide. In the case of some insects
a reduced diet slows down growth. Some wood-boring grubs sometimes
live in house timbers for years after they have been put in place.
In one instance an adult beetle emerged from a porch post that had
been standing for twenty years. The dried timber lacks the nutritive
qualities of the living tree and the growth of the grub is arrested so
that long periods pass before it reaches maturity.
A carnivorous butterfly larva lives in the nests of an Australian ant
where it feeds on the young. An especially tough outer shell protects
it from attacks by adults ants.
The rat-tailed maggot inhabits stagnant water. It feeds on the bottom
and breathes air through an extensible tube that forms its tail. Like a
diver obtaining oxygen through an air hose while working on sea bottom,
it is able to remain submerged as long as it desires.
The little frog hopper produces its own climate. In spring and summer
small masses of froth often appear on grass stems and weeds. Within
such a bubble mass, sheltered from direct rays of the sun and kept
moist by the foam, the immature insect spends its early days. For
millions of years it has been employing its own primitive form of air
conditioning.
_Gigantic Serpents of the Sky_
Titanic pink serpents coiled and wheeled in the sky. The earth below
was plunged in a chill twilight as they shut out the December sun.
These cosmic reptiles were two or three miles long. They moved about
a mile a minute. They made a noise like a tornado punctuated with the
rat-tat-tat of machine guns.
Thus the naturalist John Audubon described a mass passenger pigeon
flight over Kentucky which, he estimated, included more than a billion
birds. As they came out of the northeast they looked like a gigantic,
low pink cloud driven by a hurricane. Suddenly they split with almost
military precision into the coiling, snake-like formation as predacious
hawks hovered above them.
When these hawks came, says Audubon, at once with a noise like thunder
they rushed into compact masses, pressing upon each other towards the
center. In these almost solid masses they darted forward in undulating
lines, descended and swept close over the earth with inconceivable
velocity, mounted perpendicularly so as to resemble a vast column, and
when high were seen wheeling and twisting in continuous lines which
resembled the coils of gigantic serpents.
When the birds reassembled from their emergency snake formations,
they constituted, Audubon estimated, a column one mile broad passing
overhead at the rate of a mile a minute for three hours. Thus the solid
mass of the birds would have covered 80 square miles. Such a monster
would have required, the naturalist calculated, about nine million
bushels of food a day.
It is more than a century since anybody has witnessed such a
phenomenon. Civilization and nature combined to destroy the almost
incalculably vast hordes of pink-breasted birds which, acting in a
weird unison, seemed to the pioneers like cosmic monsters invading
the earth. Hundreds of millions were slaughtered by hunters. Millions
perished in one great Atlantic storm when, it was reported, the sea
over a radius of three or four miles was covered completely with their
bodies.
The passenger pigeon long has been extinct. The last survivor of the
tornado-like masses now is mounted and on exhibition at the Smithsonian
Institution. It died in captivity in the Cincinnati Zoological Park at
1 p.m., September 1, 1914. Every year Smithsonian ornithologists get
reports that one of these birds has been seen in some remote forest.
Almost beyond question, however, these reports are due to the wish
fulfillment of amateur bird watchers.
The extant mourning dove sometimes is mistaken for the passenger
pigeon. In the west the band-tailed pigeon has been similarly mistaken.
Even expert ornithologists might make such errors from casual
observations. Although convinced that the bird is extinct scientists
continue to investigate any plausible clue to its survival.
According to Smithsonian Institution ornithologists, there is a popular
idea that the passenger pigeon mysteriously disappeared and that,
while still enormously numerous, it suddenly ceased to exist. Its
annihilation has been attributed popularly to various natural phenomena
and it has even been rumored that the bird migrated to South America.
The natural phenomena supposed to have been causative of its extinction
are epidemics, tornadoes, early deep snowstorms, forest fires, strong
winds while the birds were crossing large bodies of water which caused
exhaustion and death by drowning. Circumstantial reports were published
of immense numbers drowned in the Gulf of Mexico, a region well beyond
the usual range of the bird. Destruction of the forests undoubtedly was
a large detrimental factor in the life history of the pigeons, for the
forests supplied their principal food as well as roosting and nesting
places.
A bird accustomed for ages to living together in large numbers and
close ranks, whether in feeding, migrating, roosting or nesting, might
find it impossible to continue these functions with greatly reduced and
scattered ranks. It is probably more than a figure of speech to say
that under these circumstances such a communist bird would lose heart,
nor is it fanciful to suppose that sterility might in consequence
affect the remnants. Our continent is so well known that accounts of
the presence of living birds must be considered more than doubtful.
The mass flights came about once every ten years in the early winter.
The normal habitat of the pigeons was in the great forests of Quebec
and Ontario. There they were widely scattered, feeding chiefly on
acorns. When snow covered the ground they moved southward, but
ordinarily not in great masses. But a periodic failure of the acorn
crop, of the extent of which the birds seemed to have some mysterious
awareness, caused them to assemble in one body and start a mass
migration southward, obscuring the sun for hours as they passed beneath
it.
Like tornadoes, they wrecked forests in their flights. Says the
naturalist Alexander Wilson: “The roosting places sometimes occupy a
large extent of forests. When they have frequented one of these places
for some time the appearance it exhibits is surprising. The ground is
covered to a depth of several inches with their dung. All the tender
grass and under wood is destroyed. The surface is strewn with large
limbs of trees, broken down by the weight of birds collecting one above
the other. The trees themselves for thousands of acres are killed as if
girdled with an axe. The marks of the desolation remain for many years
on the spot. Numerous places could be pointed out where, for several
years after, scarcely a single vegetable made its appearance.”
After these mass migrations from the north the pigeons scattered
through the forests in search of food but assembled again in the
spring for egg-laying and hatching. Wilson reported: “Not far from
Shelbyville, Kentucky about five years ago, there was one of these
breeding places which stretched through the woods in a north and south
direction several miles in breadth and was said to be more than 40
miles in length. In this tract almost every tree was furnished with
nests wherever the branches would accommodate them.
“As soon as the young were fully grown numerous parties of inhabitants
from all parts of the adjacent country came with wagons, axes, beds
and cooking utensils, many of them accompanied by the greater part of
their families, and encamped for several days at this immense nursery.
The noise was so great as to terrify their horses and it was difficult
for one person to hear another speak. The ground was strewn with broken
limbs of trees, eggs and young squab pigeon which had been precipitated
from above and upon which herds of hogs were fattening. The view
through the woods presented a perpetual tumult of crowding and falling
multitudes of pigeons, their wings roaring like thunder, mingled with
the frequent crash of falling timber.”
The last great nesting was recorded at Petoskey, Michigan, in 1878. The
area covered is said to have been forty miles long and 30 miles broad.
Systematic commercial hunting of the birds reached its height shortly
after the Civil War. In 1879 dead birds were sold on the Chicago market
at 50 cents a dozen. Pigeon hunters made from $10 to $40 a day.
_The Limbless Lizard_
A supposedly welcome guest in the underground chambers of leaf cutter
ants is the amphisbaena, a nearly limbless lizard about a foot long
which looks something like a gigantic earth worm. This creature, seldom
seen, ranges from northern Brazil to lower California. When out of its
habitat the amphisbaena is almost helpless and moves along the ground
with feeble wriggles. Some species lay eggs; other give birth to living
young.
_The Maddening Tarantula_
The tarantula of southern Europe—a large, hairy spider—long was
credited with causing a weird, infectious madness by its bite.
The first reported effect of its poison—actually quite mild—is said to
have been to put the victim into a deep lethargy from which he could
be roused only by music which set into motion an overpowering impulse
to get up and dance. Once the victim started to dance he could not
stop until he fell to the ground from exhaustion. Then the condition
supposedly was cured for a year. On the anniversary of the bite,
however, the dance was involuntarily repeated. From the tarantula’s
first victim the dancing mania allegedly spread like a contagious
disease through the surrounding countryside. The name still is used
both for an Italian dance and for the music which accompanies it.
The tarantula is a subterranean creature which hibernates in its
burrow during the winter. Bees and wasps are said to be killed almost
instantly by its bite. The spider always strikes at the junction of the
head and thorax.
_A Flower That Grows Through Solid Ice_
A plant that drills through several inches of solid ice to bloom in
early spring is the blue moonwort of the Swiss Alps. It belongs to the
primrose family. In autumn it develops thick, leathery leaves. These
lie flat on the ground, expectant of the snow and ice sheet that may
cover them to a depth of several feet.
When spring arrives and the hot sun melts most of the snow and some of
the ice, water trickles down to the rootlets and arouses growth in the
sleeping plant. Internal combustion ensues with the floral tissues. The
resulting heat melts the ice about the uprising flower buds and the
stem pushes its way upward. More water flows to the roots and finally
the plant tunnels a passage to the air and sunshine. So long as the
heat given off from the growing stem and buds is sufficient to prevent
solid freezing of the parts the plant is indifferent to the surrounding
ice cold temperature. It undergoes the usual transformations, is
fertilized by early bees and forms many hundreds of wonderful blue
flower groups which look as if they were beds over a thick layer of
transparent ice. The leaves are now no longer thick and fleshy, but
thin and papery. They yield up their carbon compounds as fuel to melt a
tunnel through the ice and production of buds and blossoms on a flower
stem above the ice mantle.
_The Versatile Ant Farmers_
There are microscopic “farmers” whose fields are measured in fractions
of inches. They are ants—the most widespread fungus-growers in the
Western Hemisphere. Their range extends from Florida to Brazil. They
are tiny creatures, seldom noticed, who cultivate a species of yeast
which is their sole food.
The ways of life of this curious ant with the formidable scientific
name of cyphomyrmex rimosus minutus, have been studied throughout their
habitat by Dr. Neal A. Weber of Swarthmore College.
“The ant,” says Dr. Weber, “is versatile in the American tropics where
the humidity is high and the temperatures uniform. The most common
sites are in clay soil on the forest floor. An empty snail shell, a
curled dead leaf or a rotted twig may suffice for a colony of these
small ants or they may find requisite conditions among roots or in the
dead wood high in the rain forest canopy.
“During the rainy season in Panama City there was a nest on a concrete
cylinder above ground which protected a gas meter. The cylinder was 17
centimeters high (about 6 inches), by 36 centimeters in diameter and
was covered loosely by a concrete cover. In the narrow space on the
rim under the cover a colony had walled off an elliptical area 36 by
17 millimeters (about 4 inches by 3/4 of an inch), in which the entire
nest with a fungus garden was formed. During drier periods the ants
would move down into the soil.
“The workers usually are slow-moving and become immobile at the
slightest disturbance. Sometimes, however, they run as rapidly as the
average ant when disturbed and seek to escape rather than feign death.
In “feigning death” the ants quickly curl up their legs and fold their
antennae close to the body so that they appear almost invisible bits of
dirt when casually examined.
“The ants spend much time in grooming the forelimbs, antennae and
other parts of the body. Regardless of how dusty an ant may become
momentarily, it keeps its antenna immaculate by drawing it through its
mouth and licking and cleansing it. They also clean one another. In
grooming each other the ants may carefully go over a large portion of
the body. In one instance a slightly callow worker was watched as it
groomed another of the same age. The one being groomed turned over on
its side, like a dog or a monkey. The grooming of each other and the
cleaning of the brood is a vital part of their activities as it removes
alien bacteria and fungi and also may have a nutritive function so far
as the brood is concerned.
“The fungus garden consist of masses from a quarter millimeter to a
half millimeter in diameter (from about 100th to a 60th of an inch.)”
They have their bitter, nearly microscopic enemies. Upon them, as upon
elephants, ride much smaller, bareback riding mites whose acrobatic
stunts would be the envy of any circus performer.
“Seven out of 16 ants so examined,” Dr. Weber says, “had mites on them.
These mites have no difficulty in moving from one site to another on
the ants. A transfer of a mite from one ant to another was watched. It
had been riding on one ant when another brushed by waving its antennae
over the other as is customary. In a flash the mite grabbed the tip of
the left antenna. The ant did not attempt to dislodge the mite although
it already had two others on its body. The mite had a rough ride, but
was not dislodged.”
The peculiar type of fungus grown by the ant does not grow naturally
outside the nest. It can be isolated and cultivated but it quickly is
overwhelmed by other fungi in any artificial culture. It is probable
that ant and fungi need each other for survival. Possibly the saliva of
the insect is essential for the growth of the primitive plant. Likewise
the peculiarly developed fungus is essential for the well-being, even
for the survival, of the ants. It is one of nature’s partnerships.
_Ostracoderms: Ancestors of True Fish_
The race of fish first appeared about 350,000,000 million years ago
in the Silurian geological era. It was made up of grotesque, clumsy,
heavily armored animals who crawled over the ooze of the sea bottoms
with very little, if any, capacity to rise or propel themselves in the
water. The ascent from such an unpropitious beginning to the swift,
graceful swimmers of today is one of the wonder stories of evolution.
These Silurian animals were the ostracoderms. They belonged to the
general fish complex but were not in the direct ancestral line of any
extant fish. This race continued, in various groupings, for at least
150,000,000 years. The earliest forms were wormlike animals whose
fossils are found in ancient rocks of Esthonia. Their heads and the
forward parts of their bodies were covered with bony plates. They had
no fins to serve for steering and balancing. In appearance they were
close to tadpoles. It is quite obvious that they were bottom-dwelling
forms who swam, if at all, awkwardly and laboriously. The evolution
into more and more efficient swimming animals can be traced through
later and later fossils throughout the life history of the race.
The body became more flexible. There was a gradual reduction in the
thickness of the external armor as the ostracoderms came to depend more
and more on speed and less on invulnerability. At the end they probably
were comparatively good swimmers.
A little later than the earliest of this long extinct family came
the first representatives of the true fish—probably derived from the
same general ancestral stock. They also were bottom-dwelling animals,
although from the beginning they appear to have been a little better
adapted for swimming. In these also, the head and forward part of the
body were encased in heavy armor. In ostracoderms, however, this had
formed a continuous shell, allowing no anterior freedom of motion in
the water. In the earliest true fish it was divided into two parts, the
head shield and the body shield. For the most part, however, they could
use only the tail and posterior part of the body for propulsion. But
through many generations various diversifications of the race became
more and more fishlike in form, shed their heavy protective plates,
developed paired fins for steering and balance, and continuously
improved as swimmers.
“We must take it for granted,” explains Prof. Anatol Heintz, Norwegian
paleontologist, “that the ancestral forms of the vertebrates evolved
in water. Most primitive forms lived on the bottom and had not yet
specialized sufficiently to be able to swim. If the oldest vertebrates
were bottom-living or burrowing forms they must have learned to swim,
just as later they learned to crawl, walk, run and finally fly.”
Among the earliest groups of true fish were the coelacanths, or “hollow
spines.” They left many fossil remains over a period of 200,000,000
years. Supposedly they became extinct about sixty million years ago, at
the start of the dawn age when most higher life types known at present
first appeared. Through all the vast eons of their existence the
“hollow spines” changed little.
Three years ago came one of the outstanding events in present day
biology. A living coelacanth was caught by native fishermen off the
northeastern coast of Madagascar. It was quite similar to its fossil
ancestors—armored head and all. Apparently the Madagascan fishermen had
been capturing similar creatures in their nets occasionally for years,
without realizing that they were of any particular significance.
To biologists the news of this capture was as exciting as would have
been that of finding a living dinosaur. The coelacanths, in fact were
hoary with age when the earliest dinosaurs appeared on earth. This fish
was a survivor from days when animals first were developing spines and
brains.
The specimen, however, was practically ruined before it came to the
attention of the scientists. Native sailors had sliced it open from
snout to tail. All the brain and other soft parts of the head were
gone. Other parts were so badly mangled that it was impossible to
reconstruct them.
Since then several others have been caught. An intriguing possibility
is that of obtaining a female with unborn young. A developing embryo
supposedly recapitulates ancestral forms. If one could be found it
would be possible to reconstruct something of the real ancestry of the
first back-boned animals.
Natives report that the coelacanth is extremely oily. Its flesh drips
oil. When boiled it quickly turns to jelly. This fact may have a
bearing on the origin of some of the earth’s great oil deposits. Man
today may be running his automobiles or heating his homes on the fuel
produced by vast hordes of these head-armored, hollow-spined fish in
the ancient warm seas.
_The Ever Faithful Hornbills_
Lady hornbills are trusting wives and gentlemen hornbills are
unbelievably faithful husbands.
The hornbills are birds with enormous beaks. They have the size of
small turkeys and are usually found in pairs in the forests of East
Africa. They are perhaps best known from the curious instinctive
behavior of the female. Before laying her annual quota of two eggs
she walls herself with mud, collected by the male, into a hole near
the top of some high jungle tree. There one of the eggs—apparently
seldom both—is hatched and the chick reared. The female continues this
voluntary imprisonment for two months or more.
There is always a small aperture in the wall. Through this the foraging
male passes food to his imprisoned mate, once an hour or less. Food
consists mostly of fruits. Sometimes he brings her what apparently are
playthings to relieve the monotony of hatching and chick-rearing.
A comprehensive report on the behavior of these grotesque birds in the
Mpanga Research Forest of Uganda, by Dr. Lawrence Kilham of Bethesda,
Maryland, is a classic on bird-watching.