COURTSHIP AND DISPLAY
THE "displays" made by male birds and by some other animals which lead
to the "fascination" of the females, and apparently to a condition
similar to that which is called "hypnotic" in man, are very remarkable.
One is tempted to say that these "displays" are made "for the purpose"
of fascinating the female. But though that would be correct in
describing similar proceedings on the part of a human "gallant," it
is not strictly so in the case of animals, any more than it is true
that a bird grows its fine plumage "for the purpose" of attracting the
female. The male bird finds itself provided with fine feathers, and
has probably a brief conscious pleasure in the fact, just as it has
in singing, but it has, of course, no control over the growth of its
feathers, nor conscious purpose in their production. Similarly, it has
no knowledge or consciousness of a purpose in the antics of "display,"
nor in singing its melodious song, though certainly it is gratified,
and has pleasurable sensations in the instinctive performances which it
finds itself going through. The great French entomologist, Fabre, who
has more minutely and thoroughly studied the wonderful proceedings of
insects in regard to these matters and others, such as nest building,
care and provision for young, deliberately says, "Ils ne savent rien de
rien"--they know nothing about anything! And that is true with only
small exception about even the highest animals until we come to man.
Some of the higher animals have a brief and fleeting "consciousness"
of what they are doing, and some of the hairy quadrupeds nearest to
man have the power of "recollecting"; that is to say, have in a small
degree conscious memory, and actually do reason and make use of their
memory of their own individual experience to a very small and limited
degree.
It is only in man that the power of reasoning--the conscious use of
memory, of deciding on this or that course of action by a conscious
appeal to the record of the individual's experience inscribed in the
substance of the brain--becomes a regular and constant procedure. And
in the lowest races of man--as, for instance, the Australian "black
fellows"--this power is much less developed than in higher races, owing
to the feebleness of their memory. Just as a little child or an old
man recognizes the fact that his memory is bad, so does the Australian
native confess to the white man that he cannot remember, and marvels at
the memory of the white man, who, he says, can see both what is behind
and what is to come.
"Displays" are often made by birds which have no very brilliant
colours. The ruff--a bird of agreeable but sombre plumage--spreads out
a ruff of feathers which grows round his neck in the breeding season
and stands in a prominent position alone on the open ground with his
head facing downwards and his long beak nearly touching the ground.
These birds are to be seen behaving in this way at the Zoological
Gardens in London. When thus posed they have a comical appearance of
being absorbed in profound thought. Suddenly, after posing for perhaps
ten minutes or more immovably in this attitude, the ruff starts into
life, running in a wide circle and spreading his wings, and then as
suddenly relapses into his pose, with downcast eyes and beak touching
the ground. This, it appears, is all a challenge to any other ruff who
ventures near him, and often results in a fight with another individual
who is offended by his "swagger" and attacks him. It also is an
invitation and attraction to the female or "reeve" who is on the look
out for a mate.
The display of the bustard, though his feathers are only light brown
and white, is a very strange and arresting performance. In ordinary
circumstances his feathers are nicely smoothed down, and he looks
neat and fit. But at the breeding season he behaves like Malvolio
when he wore cross-garters to please his lady. He approaches two or
three females who are quietly feeding, and throwing his head back
and his chest forward, swelling his neck out with inspired air and
reflecting his tail feathers inside out (so to speak) over his back,
he makes the most extraordinary havoc of his previously neat costume.
The feathers are made to stand up and reflected backwards in groups,
and show their underlying white surfaces round the head, on the chest,
and on the wings and back, so that he suggests the appearance of a
portly old gentleman, in full evening dress, the worse for liquor,
his high collar unbuttoned and flapping, his short "front" bulging
and loose, whilst he maintains all the time a pompous and dignified
pose strangely inconsistent with his disordered costume and hesitating
gait. As he struts and poses the lady bustards, though intensely
interested in his strange behaviour, make no sign, and continue pecking
for food, as who should say with Beatrice, "I wonder that you will
still be talking, Signior Benedick: nobody marks you." After enduring
this snubbing on several occasions and doggedly continuing to display
his antics, the persistent bustard reaps his reward. One among the
dissembling females can no longer keep up the pretence of indifference,
and suddenly runs off, inviting him to follow her! The same general
scheme of play is seen in the case of the peacock, who spreads his
magnificent "train" around his head and neck (not to be confused with
his tail, as it often is); in the case of the turkey, bubblyjock, or
gobble-cock, who struts and shows off his coloured wattles and fine
feathers; in that of the domestic fowl, who raises his head and neck,
crows, and has a pretty trick of scraping the ground with his wing.
Many other birds perform special antics suited to the display of their
special plumage. Among the most varied and remarkable are those of the
Birds of Paradise, which drop through the air, hang upside down on
tree twigs, and pose themselves variously (often warbling the while
seductive notes) according to the particular beauties which distinguish
each species. Cranes and some other birds dance in groups at the
mating season--really dance, making steps and jumps with the legs and
movements of the wings--in rhythm.
Reptiles do only a little in the way of display. The male newt gets a
crest in the spring like the wanton lapwing of Tennyson, and a splendid
orange-red colour on the belly. Male fishes often develop "display"
colours at the breeding season, and it is a mistake to suppose that
their eyes and brains are not sensitive to colour. We have a familiar
instance in the male of our common little stickleback, who, in early
summer, builds, in his native pond, his nest of fragments of weed
cemented together, with a wide entrance and a back door. He then
becomes brilliant blood-red on the belly (he was white before) and dark
green on the back, and swims about near the nest, and has an occasional
fight with a competitive neighbour, whilst hustling and shepherding any
female stickleback he may meet so as to make her enter it. She enters
it alone, and lays an egg, or, perhaps, two or three, and then goes out
by the back-door! The male, well pleased, at once goes into the nest,
fertilizes the eggs, and swims out again to get another contribution
to his future family. After several females have thus deposited eggs
in his nest, and he has fertilized them, he keeps guard for many
days whilst the young are developing. Even when they are hatched
he is in constant attendance on them, for there is danger of their
being eaten--not by other males, who are as busy as he is, but by the
emancipated females, who neither build the nest nor care for the young,
but just lay an egg here and an egg there when invited, and pursue a
selfish life of amusement and voracious feeding.
It is still doubtful how far male insects of the true six-legged
group appeal to the females by colour-display, even when they are
brightly coloured, or in other ways than by perfumes (which they do
very generally), but among the spiders there are some kinds (not
common ones) in which the males have on the front of the body one
or two extraordinarily brilliant spots of colour (red, apple-green,
or yellow). The male moves round the female in courtship, and poses
himself in most curious attitudes, so as to exhibit the brilliant
colour to her; forcing it, as it were, on her attention. In other
species of spiders the male dances and circles round the female, making
curious and definite antics. Some spiders also have rasp-like organs,
with which they can make a kind of singing note, which appears to
fascinate the other sex. The vibration of a tuning-fork will cause some
spiders to dance! In most spiders the female is much larger than the
male--in some cases, ten times as large--and the approach of the male
to the female is a dangerous business for him, for usually after his
embrace she turns on him, kills him, and eats him. This is almost a
unique case amongst animals (though ancient legends tell of princesses
of similar ferocity), and curiously enough is not invariable among all
species of spider. In some the males and females are quite friendly.
The ogre-like habit of female spiders is not so injurious a thing as it
may appear. For the most nourishing food is thus afforded to the female
who has to ripen her eggs, and take care of her young, whilst, if the
male escapes, it appears that he is short-lived and very soon dies.
This cannibal tendency is very strongly developed also in the allied
group, the scorpions. Two hundred scorpions were left in a cage in the
South of France, whilst the naturalist (Maupertuis) who had placed them
there was obliged to go to Paris. On his return he found one large,
very plump and active scorpion in the box, surrounded by legs and hard
bits of the bodies of the rest. The survivor was in the position of
Gilbert's ancient mariner, who said that he was "the cook and the mate,
and the captain's boy and the crew of the _Nancy Bell_." Scorpions do
not perform any courtship display. The males and females are of equal
size, and dance together, holding one another by their large claws,
before mating and retiring into a burrow.
Cuttle-fishes, squids, and the octopus--called Cephalopods--were
considered by Aristotle to be the spiders of the sea. It is curious
how they not only have a superficial resemblance of form to spiders,
but in some habits are like them, though the Cephalopods are molluscs
allied to snails and mussels, and are quite unlike spiders in
deeper structure and remote from the whole group of hard-skinned,
jointed-legged animals such as crustaceans, spiders, and insects. I
once had the chance to see a male octopus "displaying" to a female
in one of the tanks of the aquarium at Naples. There were a male
and a female already living there when we introduced from another
tank a second male, which had just destroyed and fed upon a large
lobster, who had himself, with no evil purpose, crushed the head of a
Mediterranean turtle foolishly placed by that animal between the open
fingers of the lobster's big nippers. The new arrival promptly drove
the earlier tenant octopus out of the tank. He pursued his rival round
and round with great rapidity until the latter leapt from the surface
of the water (by a violent contraction of the mantle) and escaped
into the adjacent tank. Then the triumphant intruder approached the
female--floods of changing colour, reddish-brown, purple, and yellow,
passing over the surface of his body--and commenced an extraordinary
display with his eight long sucker-bearing arms. He made these wind
into close-set flat spirals and again unwind and gracefully trail in
the water, when they immediately wound up again in spiral coils. The
female watched this proceeding for more than an hour, and then they
embraced. I could not follow any further details, but a few days after
this the female piled up a number of stones, so as to make a nest in
shape like a shallow basin. We enticed the male into a net and placed
him in another tank, so that he should not be able to molest the female
or to devour her offspring, which he would do if he had the chance.
Then the female laid her eggs--minute oval, transparent bodies, each
with a long stalk and all joined on to a common branching stem: the
whole resembled a head of millet seed. The female tended her eggs by
continually pumping a stream of water over them, and could not be
driven from them. She fought savagely and heroically in their defence.
But I succeeded in enticing her into a net by aid of a toothsome crab,
and then took a few--only a few--of the cherished eggs, and replaced
their mother in the tank, where she at once resumed the "incubation" of
her eggs. For it is an "incubation," although one in which oxygenated
water, and not warmth, is the accompaniment of the sitting of the
"hen." I was able to watch the development of the young within the
transparent eggs, which I kept in a stream of fresh sea-water, and I
published a short account of what was novel in the growth of these
embryos. It had not been studied previously, nor have I seen any later
account of the development of octopus. The true cuttle-fish, with the
hard oblong shell sunk in the back, lays each egg in a dark leathery
shell. They look like small grapes, and are left, thus protected, to
their fate. They have been studied, both before I obtained octopus eggs
and since, in great detail. The "squid" embeds her eggs, many together,
in bunches of long fingers of colourless jelly. Only the octopus and
the argonaut, among Cephalopods, are known to give maternal care and
incubation to their eggs.