The non-armoured victims, vulnerable by the sting over almost their
whole body, ordinary caterpillars and Looper caterpillars, Cetonia- and
Anoxia-larvae, whose only means of defence, apart from their mandibles,
consists of rollings and contortions, called for the testimony of
another victim, the Spider, almost as ill-protected, but armed with
formidable poison-fangs. How, in particular, will the Ringed Calicurgus
set to work in operating on the Black-bellied Tarantula, the terrible
Lycosa, who with a single bite kills the Mole or the Sparrow and
endangers the life of man? How does the bold Pompilus overcome an
adversary more powerful than herself, better-equipped with virulent
poison and capable of making a meal of her assailant? Of all the Hunting
Wasps, none risks such unequal conflicts, in which appearances would
proclaim the aggressor to be the victim and the victim the aggressor.
The problem was one deserving patient study. True, I foresaw, from the
Spider's organization, a single sting in the centre of the thorax; but
that did not explain the victory of the Wasp, emerging safe and sound
from her tussle with such a quarry. I had to see what occurred. The
chief difficulty was the scarcity of the Calicurgus. It is easy for me
to obtain the Tarantula at the desired moment: the part of the plateau
in my neighbourhood left untilled by the vine-growers provides me with
as many as are necessary. To capture the Pompilus is another matter. I
have so little hope of finding her that special quests are regarded as
useless. To search for her would perhaps be just the way not to find
her. Let us rely on the uncertainties of chance. Shall I get her or
shall I not?
I've got her. I catch her unexpectedly on the flowers. Next day I supply
myself with half a dozen Tarantulae. Perhaps I shall be able to
employ them one after the other in repeated duels. As I return from my
Lycosa-hunt, luck smiles upon me again and crowns my desires. A
second Calicurgus offers herself to my net; she is dragging her heavy,
paralysed Spider by one leg, in the dust of the highway. I attach great
value to my find: the laying of the egg has become a pressing matter;
and the mother, I believe, will accept a substitute for her victim
without much hesitation. Here then are my two captives, each under her
bell-glass with her Tarantula.
I am all eyes. What a tragedy there will be in a moment! I wait,
anxiously... But... but... what is this? Which of the two is the
assailed? Which is the assailant? The characters seem to be inverted.
The Calicurgus, unable to climb up the smooth glass wall, strides round
the ring of the circus. With a proud and rapid gait, her wings and
antennae vibrating, she goes and returns. The Lycosa is soon seen. The
Calicurgus approaches her without the least sign of fear, walks round
her and appears to have the intention of seizing one of her legs. But at
that moment the Tarantula rises almost vertically on her four hinder
legs, with her four front legs lifted and outspread, ready for the
counterstroke. The poison-fangs gape widely; a drop of venom moistens
their tips. The very sight of them makes my flesh creep. In this
terrible attitude, presenting her powerful thorax and the black velvet
of her belly to the enemy, the Spider overawes the Pompilus, who
suddenly turns tail and moves away. The Lycosa then closes her bundle of
poisoned daggers and resumes her natural pose, standing on her eight
legs; but, at the slightest attempt at aggression on the Wasp's part,
she resumes her threatening position.
She does more: suddenly she leaps and flings herself upon the
Calicurgus; swiftly she clasps her and nibbles at her with her fangs.
Without wielding her sting in self-defence, the other disengages
herself and merges unscathed from the angry encounter. Several times in
succession I witness the attack; and nothing serious ever befalls the
Wasp, who swiftly withdraws from the fray and appears to have received
no hurt. She resumes her marching and countermarching no less boldly and
swiftly than before.
Is this Wasp invulnerable, that she thus escapes from the terrible
fangs? Evidently not. A real bite would be fatal to her. Big, sturdily
built Acridians succumb (Locusts and Grasshoppers.--Translator's Note.);
how is it that she, with her delicate organism, does not! The Spider's
daggers, therefore, make no more than an idle feint; their points do not
enter the flesh of the tight-clasped Wasp. If the strokes were real, I
should see bleeding wounds, I should see the fangs close for a moment on
the part seized; and with all my attention I cannot detect anything of
the kind. Then are the fangs powerless to pierce the Wasp's integuments?
Not so. I have seen them penetrate, with a crackling of broken armour,
the corselet of the Acridians, which offers a far greater resistance.
Once again, whence comes this strange immunity of the Calicurgus held
between the legs and assailed by the daggers of the Tarantula? I do not
know. Though in mortal peril from the enemy confronting her, the Lycosa
threatens her with her fangs and cannot decide to bite, owing to a
repugnance which I do not undertake to explain.
Obtaining nothing more than alarums and excursions of no great
seriousness, I think of modifying the gladiatorial arena and
approximating it to natural conditions. The soil is very imperfectly
represented by my work-table; and the Spider has not her fortress, her
burrow, which plays a part of some importance both in attack and in
defence. A short length of reed is planted perpendicularly in a large
earthenware pan filled with sand. This will be the Lycosa's burrow. In
the middle I stick some heads of globe-thistle garnished with honey as
a refectory for the Pompilus; a couple of Locusts, renewed as and
when consumed, will sustain the Tarantula. These comfortable quarters,
exposed to the sun, receive the two captives under a wire-gauze dome,
which provides adequate ventilation for a prolonged residence.
My artifices come to nothing; the session closes without result. A
day passes, two days, three; still nothing happens. The Pompilus is
assiduous in her visits to the honeyed flower-clusters; when she has
eaten her fill, she clambers up the dome and makes interminable circuits
of the netting; the Tarantula quietly munches her Locust. If the other
passes within reach, she swiftly raises herself and waves her off. The
artificial burrow, the reed-stump, fulfills its purpose excellently. The
Lycosa and the Pompilus resort to it in turns, but without quarrelling.
And that is all. The drama whose prologue was so full of promise appears
to be indefinitely postponed.
I have a last resource, on which I base great hopes: it is to remove my
two Calicurgi to the very site of their investigations and to install
them at the door of the Spider's lodging, at the top of the natural
burrow. I take the field with an equipment which I am carrying across
the country for the first time: a glass bell-jar, a wire-gauze cover and
the various implements needed for handling and transferring my irascible
and dangerous subjects. My search for burrows among the pebbles and the
tufts of thyme and lavender is soon successful.
Here is a splendid one. I learn by inserting a straw that it is
inhabited by a Tarantula of a size suited to my plans. The soil around
the aperture is cleared and flattened to receive the wire-gauze, under
which I place a Pompilus. This is the time to light a pipe and wait,
lying on the pebbles...Yet another disappointment. Half an hour goes by;
and the Wasp confines herself to travelling round and round the netting
as she did in my study. She gives no sign of greed when confronted with
the burrow, though I can see the Tarantula's diamond eyes glittering at
the bottom.
The trellised wall is replaced by the glass wall, which, since it does
not allow her to scale its heights, will oblige the Wasp to remain on
the ground and at last to take cognizance of the shaft, which she seems
to ignore. This time we have done the trick!
After a few circuits of her cage, the Calicurgus notices the pit yawning
at her feet. She goes down it. This daring confounds me. I should never
have ventured to anticipate as much. That she should suddenly fling
herself upon the Tarantula when the latter is outside her stronghold,
well and good; but to rush into the lair, when the terrible monster is
waiting for you below with those two poisoned daggers of hers! What will
come of such temerity? A buzzing of wings ascends from the depths. Run
to earth in her private apartments, the Lycosa is no doubt at grips with
the intruder. That hum of wings is the Calicurgus' paean of triumph,
until it be her death-song. The slayer may well be the slain. Which of
the two will come up alive?
It is the Lycosa, who hurriedly scampers out and posts herself just over
the orifice of the burrow, in her posture of defence, her fangs open,
her four front legs uplifted. Can the other have been stabbed? Not at
all, for she emerges in her turn, not without receiving on the way a
cuff from the Spider, who immediately regains her lair. Dislodged from
her basement a second and yet a third time, the Tarantula always
comes up unwounded; she always awaits her adversary on her threshold,
administers punishment and reenters her dwelling. In vain do I try
my two Pompili alternately and change the burrow; I do not succeed
in observing anything else. Certain conditions not realized by my
stratagems are lacking to complete the tragedy.
Discouraged by the repetition of my futile attempts, I throw up the
game, the richer however by one fact of some value: the Calicurgus,
without the least fear, descends into the Tarantula's den and dislodges
her. I imagine that things happen in the same fashion outside my cages.
When expelled from her dwelling, the Spider is more timid and more
vulnerable to attack. Moreover, while hampered by a narrow shaft, the
operator would not wield her lancet with the precision called for by her
designs. The bold irruption shows us once again, more plainly than the
tussles on my table, the Lycosa's reluctance to sink her fangs into her
enemy's body. When the two are face to face at the bottom of the lair,
then or never is the moment to have it out with the foe. The Tarantula
is in her own house, with all its conveniences; every nook and corner of
the bastion is familiar to her. The intruder's movements are hampered by
her ignorance of the premises. Quick, my poor Lycosa, quick, a bite; and
it's all up with your persecutor! But you refrain, I know not why, and
your reluctance is the saving of the rash invader. The silly Sheep does
not reply to the butcher's knife by charging with lowered horns. Can it
be that you are the Pompilus' Sheep?
My two subjects are reinstalled in my study under their wire-gauze
covers, with bed of sand, reed-stump burrow and fresh honey, complete.
Here they find again their first Lycosae, fed upon Locusts. Cohabitation
continues for three weeks without other incidents than scuffles and
threats which become less frequent day by day. No serious hostility is
displayed on either side. At last the Calicurgi die: their day is over.
A pitiful end after such an enthusiastic beginning.
Shall I abandon the problem? Why, not a bit of it! I have encountered
greater difficulties, but they have never deterred me from a
warmly-cherished project. Fortune favours the persevering. She proves
as much by offering me, in September, a fortnight after the death of my
Tarantula-huntresses, another Calicurgus, captured for the first time.
This is the Harlequin Calicurgus (C. scurra, LEP.), who sports the same
gaudy costume as the first and is almost of the same size.
Now what does this newcomer, of whom I know nothing, want? A Spider,
that is certain; but which? A huntress like this will need a corpulent
quarry: perhaps the Silky Epeira (E. serica), perhaps the Banded
Epeira (E. fasciata), the largest Spiders in the district, next to the
Tarantula. The first of these spreads her large upright net, in which
Locusts are caught, from one clump of brushwood to another. I find
her in the copses on the neighbouring hills. The second stretches
hers across the ditches and the little streams frequented by the
Dragon-flies. I find her near the Aygues, beside the irrigation-canals
fed by the torrent. A couple of trips procures me the two Epeirae, whom
I offer to my captive next day, both at the same time. It is for her to
choose according to her taste.
The choice is soon made: the Banded Epeira is the one preferred. But she
does not yield without protest. On the approach of the Wasp, she rises
and assumes a defensive attitude, just like that of the Lycosa. The
Calicurgus pays no attention to threats: under her harlequin's coat, she
is violent in attack and quick on her legs. There is a rapid exchange of
fisticuffs; and the Epeira lies overturned on her back. The Pompilus is
on top of her, belly to belly, head to head; with her legs she masters
the Spider's legs; with her mandibles she grips the cephalothorax. She
curves her abdomen, bringing the tip of it beneath her; she draws her
sting and...
One moment, reader, if you please. Where is the sting about to strike?
From what we have learnt from the other paralysers, it will be driven
into the breast, to suppress the movement of the legs. That is your
opinion; it was also mine. Well, without blushing too deeply at our
common and very excusable error, let us confess that the insect knows
better than we do. It knows how to assure success by a preparatory
manoeuvre of which you and I had never dreamt. Ah, what a school is that
of the animals! Is it not true that, before striking the adversary, you
should take care not to get wounded yourself? The Harlequin Pompilus
does not disregard this counsel of prudence. The Epeira carries beneath
her throat two sharp daggers, with a drop of poison at their points;
the Calicurgus is lost if the Spider bites her. Nevertheless, her
anaesthetizing demands perfect steadiness of the lancet. What is to
be done in the face of this danger which might disconcert the most
practised surgeon? The patient must first be disarmed and then operated
on.
And in fact the Calicurgus' sting, aimed from back to front, is driven
into the Epeira's mouth, with minute precautions and marked persistency.
On the instant, the poison-fangs close lifelessly and the formidable
quarry is powerless to harm. The Wasp's abdomen then extends its arc and
drives the needle behind the fourth pair of legs, on the median line,
almost at the junction of the belly and the cephalothorax. At this
point the skin is finer and more easily penetrable than elsewhere. The
remainder of the thoracic surface is covered with a tough breast-plate
which the sting would perhaps fail to perforate. The nerve-centres, the
source of the leg-movements, are situated a little above the wounded
point, but the back-to-front direction of the sting makes it possible
to reach them. This last wound results in the paralysis of all the eight
legs at once.
To enlarge upon it further would detract from the eloquence of this
performance. First of all, to safeguard the operator, a stab in the
mouth, that point so terribly armed, the most formidable of all; then,
to safeguard the larva, a second stab in the nerve-centres of the
thorax, to suppress the power of movement. I certainly suspected that
the slayers of robust Spiders were endowed with special talents; but
I was far from expecting their bold logic, which disarms before
it paralyses. So the Tarantula-huntress must behave, who, under my
bell-glasses, refused to surrender her secret. I now know what her
method is; it has been divulged by a colleague. She throws the terrible
Lycosa upon her back, pricks her prickers by stinging her in the mouth
and then, in comfort, with a single thrust of the lancet, obtains
paralysis of the legs.
I examine the Epeira immediately after the operation and the Tarantula
when the Calicurgus is dragging her by one leg to her burrow, at the
foot of some wall. For a little while longer, a minute at most, the
Epeira convulsively moves her legs. So long as these throes continue,
the Pompilus does not release her prey. She seems to watch the progress
of the paralysis. With the tips of her mandibles she explores the
Spider's mouth several times over, as though to ascertain if the
poison-fangs are really innocuous. When all movement subsides, the
Pompilus makes ready to drag her prey elsewhere. It is then I take
charge of it.
What strikes me more than anything else is the absolute inertia of the
fangs, which I tickle with a straw without succeeding in rousing
them from their torpor. The palpi, on the other hand, their immediate
neighbours, wave at the least touch. The Epeira is placed in safety, in
a flask, and undergoes a fresh examination a week later. Irritability
has in part returned. Under the stimulus of a straw, I see her legs move
a little, especially the lower joints, the tibiae and tarsi. The palpi
are even more irritable and mobile. These different movements, however,
are lacking in vigour and coordination; and the Spider cannot employ
them to turn over, much less to escape. As for the poison-fangs, I
stimulate them in vain: I cannot get them to open or even to stir. They
are therefore profoundly paralysed and in a special manner. The peculiar
insistence of the sting when the mouth was stabbed told me as much in
the beginning.
At the end of September, almost a month after the operation, the Epeira
is in the same condition, neither dead nor alive: the palpi still quiver
when touched with a straw, but nothing else moves. At length, after
six or seven weeks' lethargy, real death supervenes, together with its
comrade, putrefaction.
The Tarantula of the Ringed Calicurgus, as I take her from the owner
at the moment of transportation, presents the same peculiarities. The
poison-fangs are no longer irritable when tickled with my straw: a fresh
proof, added to those of analogy, to show that the Lycosa, like the
Epeira, has been stung in the mouth. The palpi, on the other hand, are
and will be for weeks highly irritable and mobile. I wish to emphasise
this point, the importance of which will be recognized presently.
I found it impossible to provoke a second attack from my Harlequin
Calicurgus: the tedium of captivity did not favour the exercise of her
talents. Moreover, the Epeira sometimes had something to do with her
refusals; a certain ruse de guerre which was twice employed before my
eyes may well have baffled the aggressor. Let me describe the incident,
if only to increase our respect a little for these foolish Spiders, who
are provided with perfected weapons and do not dare to make use of them
against the weaker but bolder assailant.
The Epeira occupies the wall of the wire-gauze cage, with her eight legs
wide-spread upon the trelliswork; the Calicurgus is wheeling round
the top of the dome. Seized with panic at the sight of the approaching
enemy, the Spider drops to the ground, with her belly upwards and her
legs gathered together. The other dashes forward, clasps her round the
body, explores her and prepares to sting her in the mouth. But she does
not bare her weapon. I see her bending attentively over the poisoned
fangs, as though to investigate their terrible mechanism; she then goes
away. The Spider is still motionless, so much so that I really believe
her dead, paralysed unknown to me, at a moment when I was not looking.
I take her from the cage to examine her comfortably. No sooner is she
placed on the table than behold, she comes to life again and promptly
scampers off! The cunning creature was shamming death beneath the Wasp's
stiletto, so artfully that I was taken in. She deceived an enemy more
cunning than myself, the Pompilus, who inspected her very closely
and took her for a corpse unworthy of her dagger. Perhaps the simple
creature, like the Bear in the fable of old, already noticed the smell
of high meat.
This ruse, if ruse it be, appears to me more often than not to turn to
the disadvantage of the Spider, whether Tarantula, Epeira or another.
The Calicurgus who has just put the Spider on her back after a brisk
fight knows quite well that her prostrate foe is not dead. The latter,
thinking to protect itself, simulates the inertia of a corpse; the
assailant profits by this to deliver her most perilous blow, the stab in
the mouth. Were the fangs, each tipped with its drop of poison, to open
then; were they to snap, to give a desperate bite, the Pompilus would
not dare to expose the tip of her abdomen to their deadly scratch. The
shamming of death is exactly what enables the huntress to succeed in her
dangerous operation. They say, O guileless Epeirae, that the struggle
for life has taught you to adopt this inert attitude for purposes of
defence. Well, the struggle for life was a very bad counsellor. Trust
rather to common sense and learn, by degrees, at your own cost, that to
hit back, above all if you can do so promptly, is still the best way to
intimidate the enemy. (Fabre does not believe in the actual shamming
of death by animals. Cf. "The Glow-worm and Other Beetles," by J.
Henri Fabre, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos: chapters 8 to
15.--Translator's Note.)
The remainder of my observations on these insects under glass is little
more than a long series of failures. Of two operators on Weevils, one,
the Sandy Cerceris (C. arenaria), persistently scorned the victims
offered; the other, Ferrero's Cerceris (C. Ferreri), allowed herself to
be empted after two days' captivity. Her tactical method, as I expected,
is precisely that of the Cleonus-huntress, the Great Cerceris, with whom
my investigations commenced. When confronted with the Acorn-weevil, she
seizes the insect by the snout, which is immensely long and shaped
like a pipe-stem, and plants her sting in its body to the rear of the
prothorax, between the first and second pair of legs. It is needless to
insist: the spoiler of the Cleoni has taught us enough about this mode
of operation and its results.
None of the Bembex-wasps, whether chosen among the huntresses of
the Gadfly or among the lovers of the House-fly rabble, satisfied my
aspirations. Their method is as unknown to me now as at the distant
period when I used to watch it in the Bois des Issards. (Cf. "The
Hunting Wasps": chapters 14 to 18.--Translator's Note.) Their impetuous
flight, their love of long journeys are incompatible with captivity.
Stunned by colliding with the walls of their glass or wire-gauze prison,
they all perish within twenty-four hours. Swifter in their movements
and apparently satisfied with their honeyed thistle-heads, the Spheges,
huntresses of Crickets or Ephippigers, die as quickly of nostalgia. All
I offer them leaves them indifferent.
Nor can I get anything out of the Eumenes, notably the biggest of them,
the builder of gravel cupolas, Amedeus' Eumenes. All the Pompili, except
the Harlequin Calicurgus, refuse my Spiders. The Palarus, who preys upon
an indefinite number of the Hymenopteron clan, refuses to tell me if she
drinks the honey of the Bees, as does the Philanthus, or if she lets the
others go without manipulating them to make them disgorge. The Tachytes
do not vouchsafe their Locusts a glance; Stizus ruficornis promptly
gives up the ghost, disdaining the Praying Mantis which I provide for
her.
What is the use of continuing this list of checks? The rule may
be gathered from these few examples: occasional successes and many
failures. What can be the reason? With the exception of the Philanthus,
tempted from time to time by a bumper of honey, the predatory Wasps do
not hunt on their own account; they have their victualling-time, when
the egg-laying is imminent, when the family calls for food. Outside
these periods, the finest heads of game might well leave these
nectar-bibbers indifferent. I am careful therefore, as far as possible,
to capture my subjects at the proper season; I give preference to
mothers caught upon the threshold of the burrow with their prey between
their legs. This diligence of mine by no means always succeeds. There
are demoralized insects which, once under glass, even after a brief
delay, no longer care about the equivalent of their prize.
All the species do not perhaps pursue their game with the same ardour;
mood and temperament are more variable even than conformation. To these
factors, which are of the nicest order, we may add that of the hour,
which is often unfavourable when the subject is caught at haphazard on
the flowers, and we shall have more than enough to explain the frequency
of the failures. After all, I must beware of representing my failures
as the rule: what does not succeed one day may very well succeed another
day, under different conditions. With perseverance and a little skill,
any one who cares to continue these interesting studies will, I am sure,
fill up many gaps. The problem is difficult but not impossible.
I will not quit my bell-jars without saying a word on the entomological
tact of the captives when they decide to attack. One of the pluckiest
of my subjects, the Hairy Ammophila, was not always provided with
the hereditary dish of her family, the Grey Worm. I offered her
indiscriminately any bare-skinned caterpillars that I chanced to find.
Some were yellow, some green, some brown with white edges. All were
accepted without hesitation, provided that they were of suitable size.
Tasty game was recognized wonderfully under very dissimilar liveries.
But a young Zeuzera-caterpillar, dug out of the branches of a
lilac-tree, and a silkworm of small dimensions were definitely refused.
The over-fed products of our silkworm-nurseries and the mystery-loving
caterpillar which gnaws the inner wood of the lilac inspired her with
suspicion and disgust, despite their bare skin, which favoured the
sting, and their shape, which was similar to that of the victims
accepted.
Another ardent huntress, the Interrupted Scolia, refused the
Cetonia-grub, which is of like habits with the Anoxia-larva; the
Two-banded Scolia also refused the Anoxia. The Philanthus, the headlong
murderess of Bees, saw through my trickery when I confronted her with
the Virgilian Bee, the Eristalis (E. tenax). She, a Philanthus, take
this Fly for a Bee! What next! The popular idea is mistaken; antiquity
too is mistaken, as witness the "Georgics," which make the putrid
remains of a sacrificed Bull give birth to a swarm; but the Wasp makes
no mistake. In her eyes, which see farther than ours, the Eristalis is
an odious Dipteron, a lover of corruption, and nothing more.