THE SPANISH COPRIS
To show instinct performing on behalf of the egg what reason, ripened
by study and experience, would advise is a result of no mean
philosophic import; and I find myself seized with a scruple aroused by
scientific austerity. Not that I wish to give science a forbidding
aspect: I am convinced that one can say excellent things without
employing a barbarous vocabulary. Clearness is the supreme politeness
of whoso wields a pen. I do my best to observe it. And the scruple that
stops me is of another kind.
I ask myself if I am not here the victim of an illusion. I say to
myself:
“The Sacred Beetles and others are manufacturers of balls, of pills.
That is their trade, learnt we know not how, prescribed perhaps by
their structure, in particular by their long legs, some of which are
slightly curved. When working for the egg, what wonder if they continue
underground their special craft as ball-making artisans?”
Setting aside the neck of the pear and the jutting tip of the ovoid,
details the interpretation of which presents quite other difficulties,
there remains the most important mass as regards bulk, the globular
mass, a repetition of that which the insect makes outside the burrow;
there remains the ball with which the Sacred Beetle plays in the sun,
sometimes without making any other use of it.
Then what does the globulous form, which presents the most efficacious
preventative against desiccation during the heat of summer, do here?
Physically, this property of the sphere and of its near neighbour, the
ovoid, is undeniable; but these shapes offer only a casual concord with
the difficulty overcome. The animal built to roll balls across the
fields also fashions balls underground. If the worm be all the better
for finding tender foodstuffs under its mandibles to the very end, that
is a capital thing for the worm, but it is no reason why we should
extol the instinct of the mother.
To complete my conviction, I shall need a portly Dung-beetle who is a
total stranger to the pill-making craft in matters of every-day life
and who, nevertheless, when the moment of laying is at hand, makes a
sudden change in her habits and shapes her harvest into a ball. Is
there any such in my neighbourhood? Yes, there is; and she is one of
the handsomest and largest, next to the Sacred Beetle. I speak of the
Spanish Copris, who is so remarkable for her suddenly sloping corselet
and for the extravagant horn surmounting her head.
Thick-set, round, dumpy, slow of gait, the Spanish Copris is certainly
not equal to the athletic performances of the Sacred Beetle. The legs,
of very middling length and folded under the belly at the least alarm,
bear no comparison with the stilts of the pill-rollers. Their stiff and
stunted form alone is enough to tell us that the insect would not care
to wander about hampered by a rolling ball.
The Copris is, in point of fact, of a sedentary habit. Once he has
found his provisions, at night or in the evening twilight, he digs a
burrow under the heap. It is a rough cave, large enough to hold a big
apple. Here is introduced, piecemeal, the matter forming the roof or,
at least, lying on the door-sill; here is engulfed, without definite
shape, an enormous supply of victuals, bearing eloquent witness to the
insect’s gluttony. As long as the hoard lasts, the Copris, engrossed in
the pleasures of the table, does not return to the surface. The
hermitage is not abandoned until the larder is emptied, when the insect
recommences its nocturnal searches, finds a new treasure and digs
itself a new temporary establishment.
Plying this trade as a setter-in of ordure without preliminary
manipulation, the Copris, evidently, is absolutely ignorant, for the
time being, of the art of kneading and modelling a globular loaf.
Besides, his short, awkward legs seem radically opposed to any such
art.
In May, or June at latest, comes laying-time. The insect, itself so
ready to fill its belly with the most sordid materials, becomes
particular, where the portion of its family is concerned. Like the
Sacred Beetle, it now wants the soft produce of the sheep, deposited in
a single lump. Even when copious, the cake is buried on the spot in its
entirety. Not a trace of it remains outside. Economy demands that it be
gathered to the last crumb.
You see: no journey, no carting, no preparations. The cake is carried
down to the cellar by armfuls and at the identical spot where it is
lying. The insect repeats, with an eye to its grubs, what it did when
working for itself. As for the burrow, which is marked by a large
mole-hill, it is a roomy cave dug at a depth of some twenty
centimetres. [14] I observe a greater width, a greater perfection than
in the temporary abodes occupied by the Copris at times of revelry.
But let us leave the insect working in a state of liberty. The evidence
supplied by chance meetings would be incomplete, fragmentary and
disconnected. An examination in the volery is much to be preferred; and
the Copris lends himself to this most admirably. Let us first watch the
storing.
In the discreet dusk of the twilight, I see him appear on the threshold
of his burrow. He has mounted from the depths, he has come to gather
his harvest. He has not long to seek: the provisions are there, outside
the door, plentifully served and renewed by my care. Timidly, prepared
to retreat at the least alarm, he walks up to them with a slow and
measured step. The shield cuts and rummages, the fore-legs extract. An
armful is separated from the rest, quite a modest armful, crumbling to
pieces. The Copris drags it backwards and disappears underground. In
less than two minutes, he is back again. Never forgetting his caution,
he questions the neighbouring space with the outspread leaflets of his
antennæ before crossing the threshold of his dwelling.
A distance of two or three inches separates him from the heap. It is a
serious matter for him to venture so far. He would have preferred the
victuals exactly over his door, forming a roof to the house. This would
avoid his having to go out, always a source of anxiety. I have decided
otherwise. To facilitate my observations, I have placed the victuals
just on one side. Little by little, the alarmist grows accustomed to
the open air and accustomed to my presence, which, for that matter, I
render as discreet as possible. The taking down of the armfuls is
repeated indefinitely. They are always shapeless scraps, morsels such
as one might pick off with a small pair of pincers.
Having learnt what I want to know about the method of warehousing, I
leave the insect to its work, which continues for the best part of the
night. On the following days, nothing: the Copris goes out no more.
Enough treasure has been amassed in a single night’s sitting. Let us
wait a while and leave the insect time to stow its harvest as it
pleases.
Before the week is out, I dig up the soil of the volery and lay bare
the burrow, the victualling of which I have partly followed. As in the
fields, it is a spacious hall, with an irregular, surbased ceiling and
an almost level floor. In a corner is a round hole, similar to the
orifice of the neck of a bottle. This is the business-entrance, opening
on a slanting gallery that runs up to the surface. The walls of the
house dug in fresh soil are carefully piled up and possess enough power
of resistance not to give way under the disturbance produced by my
excavations. We can see that, in labouring for the future, the insect
has put forth all its talent, all its strength as a digger, to produce
lasting work. Whereas the marquee in which we feast is a cavity
hurriedly hollowed out, our permanent dwelling is a crypt of larger
dimensions and of a much more finished construction.
I suspect that both sexes take part in the master work: at least, I
often come upon the couple in the burrows destined for the laying. The
roomy and luxurious apartment was no doubt once the wedding-hall; the
marriage was consummated under the great vault to the building of which
the swain has contributed: a gallant way of declaring his ardour. I
also suspect the husband of lending a hand to his partner with the
harvesting and the storing. From what I have gathered, he too, strong
as he is, collects his armfuls and goes down into the crypt. The minute
and tricky work goes much faster with two helping. But, once the house
is well supplied, he retires discreetly, returns to the surface and
goes and settles down elsewhere, leaving the mother to her delicate
functions. His part in the family-mansion is ended.
Now what do we find in this mansion, to which we have seen so many tiny
loads of provisions lowered? A muddled heap of separate morsels? Not in
the least. I always find a single lump, a huge loaf which fills the
box, but for a narrow passage all around, just wide enough to leave the
mother room to move.
This sumptuous lump, a real Twelfth-Night cake, has no fixed shape. I
come across some that are ovoid, suggesting a turkey’s egg in form and
size; I find some that are a flattened ellipsoid, similar to the common
onion; I discover some that are almost round, reminding one of a Dutch
cheese; I see some that are circular and slightly raised on the upper
surface, like the loaves of the Provençal rustic or, better still, the
fougasso à l’iôu [15] wherewith the Easter festival is celebrated. In
every case, the surface is smooth and regularly curved.
There is no mistaking what has happened: the mother has collected and
kneaded into one lump the numerous fragments brought down one after the
other; out of all those particles she has made a homogeneous piece, by
dint of mashing them, amalgamating them, stamping on them. I repeatedly
surprise the baker on the top of the colossal loaf beside which the
Sacred Beetle’s pill cuts so poor a figure: she goes strolling about on
the convex surface, which sometimes measures a decimetre [16] across;
she pats the mass, consolidates it, levels it. I can give but a glance
at the curious scene. As soon as she is perceived, the pastry-cook
slides down the curved slope and huddles out of sight beneath the pie.
To follow the work further, to study its close detail, we must resort
to artifice. The difficulty is almost nil. Either my long practice with
the Sacred Beetle has made me more skilful in methods of research, or
else the Copris is less circumspect and endures more readily the
annoyance of a long captivity; for I succeed, without the least
impediment, in following all the phases of the nest-making at my
heart’s ease.
I employ two methods, each fitted to instruct me as to certain
particulars. Whenever the voleries supply me with a few large cakes, I
move these, with the mother, and place them in my study. The
receptacles are of two sorts, according to whether I want light or
darkness. For light, I employ glass jars with a diameter more or less
the same as that of the burrows, say about a dozen centimetres. [17] At
the bottom of each is a thin layer of fresh sand, quite insufficient to
allow the Copris to bury herself in it, but convenient, nevertheless,
to save the insect from the slippery footing provided by the glass and
to give it the illusion of a soil similar to that of which I have
deprived it. On this layer the jar receives the mother and her loaf.
I need hardly say that the startled insect would not undertake anything
under conditions of light, however softly modulated. It demands
complete obscurity, which I produce by means of a cardboard box
encasing the cylinder. By carefully raising this box a little, I am
able, presently, when I feel inclined, to surprise the captive at her
work and even to follow her doings for a time. The method, the reader
will see, is much simpler than that which I used when I wished to see
the Sacred Beetle engaged in modelling her pear. The easier-going mood
of the Copris lends itself to this simplification, which would be none
too successful with the other. A dozen of these eclipsed apparatus are
thus arranged on the large table in the laboratory. Any one seeing the
set would take them for an assortment of groceries in whity-brown paper
bags.
For darkness, I use flower-pots filled with fresh, heaped sand. The
mother and her cake occupy the lower portion, which is arranged as a
nest by means of a cardboard screen forming a ceiling and supporting
the sand above. Or else I simply put the mother on the surface of the
sand with a supply of provisions. She digs herself a burrow, does her
warehousing, makes herself a nest and things happen as usual. In all
cases, a sheet of glass used as a lid answers for my prisoners’ safety.
I rely upon these several dark apparatus to inform me about a delicate
point the particulars whereof will be set forth in their proper place.
What do the glass jars covered with an opaque sheath teach us? They
teach us much, of a most interesting character, and this to begin with:
the big loaf does not owe its curve—which is always regular,
notwithstanding its varying form—to any rolling process. The inspection
of the natural burrow has already told us that so large a mass could
not have been rolled into a cavity of which it fills almost the whole
space. Besides, the strength of the insect would be unequal to moving
so great a load.
Questioned from time to time, the jar repeats the same conclusion for
our benefit. I see the mother, hoisted atop the piece, feeling here,
feeling there, bestowing little taps, smoothing away the projecting
points, perfecting the thing; never do I catch her looking as though
she wanted to turn the block. It is as clear as daylight: rolling has
nothing whatever to do with the matter.
The dough-maker’s assiduity, her patient cares make me suspect a delay
in the manufacture whereof I was far from dreaming. Why so many
after-touches to the block, why so long a wait before employing it? A
week and more passes, in fact, before the insect, ever pressing and
polishing, decides to use its hoard.
The baker, when he has kneaded his dough to the desired extent,
collects it into a single heap in a corner of the kneading-trough. The
heat of the panary fermentation smoulders better in the heart of the
voluminous mass. The Copris knows this secret of the bake-house. She
collects the sum total of her harvests into a single lump; she
carefully kneads the whole into a provisional loaf which she gives time
to improve by means of an inner labour that makes the paste more
palatable and gives it a degree of consistency favourable to subsequent
manipulations. As long as the chemical work remains unfinished, both
the journeyman-baker and the Copris wait. To the insect this means a
long spell, a week at least.
It is done. The baker’s man divides his lump into smaller lumps, each
of which will become a loaf. The Copris acts likewise. By means of a
circular gash made with the cleaver of the shield and the saw of the
fore-legs, she separates from the main body a section of the prescribed
size. For this stroke of the trencher, no hesitation is needed, no
after-touches that add or subtract. Off-hand and with a plain, decisive
cut, a lump is obtained of the requisite bulk.
It now becomes a question of shaping it. Clasping it as best it can in
its short arms, so incompatible, one would think, with work of this
kind, the insect rounds the section by the one and only means of
pressure. It gravely moves about the hitherto shapeless ball, climbs
up, climbs down; it turns to left and right, above and below;
methodically, it presses a little more here, a little less there; it
improves by new touches, with unchanging patience; and, in twenty-four
hours’ time, the angular piece has become a perfect sphere, the size of
a plum. In a corner of her crammed studio, the podgy artist, with
hardly room to move, has finished her work without once shaking it on
its base; by dint of time and patience, she has obtained the
geometrical globe which her clumsy tools and her confined space seemed
bound to refuse her.
The insect continues for a long time yet to improve and lovingly to
polish its sphere, gently passing its foot to and fro until the least
protuberance has disappeared. Its finikin after-touches look as though
they would never be done. Towards the end of the second day, however,
the globe is pronounced right and proper. The mother climbs to the dome
of her edifice and there, still by simple pressure, hollows out a
shallow crater. In this basin the egg is laid.
Then, with extreme caution, with a delicacy that is most surprising in
such rough tools, the lips of the crater are brought together so as to
form a vaulted roof over the egg. The mother slowly turns, rakes a
little, draws
the material upwards and finishes the closing. This is the most
ticklish work of all. A careless pressure, a miscalculated thrust might
easily jeopardize the life of the germ under its slender ceiling.
From time to time, the work of closing is suspended. The mother,
motionless, with lowered forehead, seems to auscultate the underlying
cavity, to listen to what is happening within. All’s well, it seems;
and the patient labour is resumed: a fine scraping of the sides towards
the summit, which tapers a little and lengthens out. In this way, an
ovoid with the small end uppermost replaces the original sphere. Under
the more or less projecting nipple is the hatching-chamber, with the
egg. Twenty-four hours more are spent in this minute work. Total: four
times round the clock and sometimes longer to construct the sphere,
hollow it out basinwise, lay the egg and shut it in by transforming the
sphere into an ovoid.
The insect goes back to the cut loaf and helps itself to a second
slice, which, by the same manipulations as before, becomes an ovoid
sheltering an egg. The surplus suffices for a third ovoid, pretty often
even for a fourth. I have never seen this number exceeded when the
mother had at her disposal only the materials which she had heaped up
in the burrow.
The laying is over. Here is the mother in her retreat, which is almost
filled by the three or four cradles standing one against the other,
with their poles jutting upwards. What will she do now? Go away, no
doubt, to recruit her strength a little out of doors, after a prolonged
fast. He who thinks this is mistaken. She remains. And yet she has
eaten nothing since she came underground, taking good care not to touch
the loaf, which, divided into equal portions, will be the food of the
family. The Copris is touchingly scrupulous in the matter of the
inheritance: she is a devoted mother, who braves hunger lest her
offspring should starve.
She braves it for a second reason: to mount guard around the cradles.
From the end of June onwards, the burrows are hard to find, because the
mole-hills disappear through the action of some storm, or the wind, or
the feet of the passers-by. The few which I succeed in discovering
always contain the mother dozing beside a group of pills, in each of
which a grub, now nearing its complete development, feasts on the fat
of the land.
My dark apparatus, flower-pots filled with fresh sand, confirm what the
fields have taught me. Buried with provisions in the first fortnight in
May, the mothers do not reappear on the surface, under the glass lid.
They keep hidden in the burrow after laying their eggs; they spend the
sultry dog-days with their ovoids, watching them, no doubt, as the
glass jars, rid of subterranean mysteries, tell us.
They come up again at the time of the first autumnal rains, in
September. But by then the new generation has attained its perfect
form. The mother, therefore, enjoys underground that rare privilege for
the insect, the delight of knowing her family; she hears her sons
scratching at the shell to obtain their liberty; she is present at the
bursting of the casket which she has fashioned so conscientiously;
maybe she helps the exhausted weaklings, if the ground have not been
cool enough to soften their cells. Mother and progeny leave the subsoil
together and arrive together at the autumn banquets, when the sun is
mild and the ovine manna plentiful along the paths.
THE ONTHOPHAGI