The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles Part 18

Another characteristic thrusts itself upon my notice. If I shake him for a moment and then place him on the ground upon his back, he remains a long time without stirring. No other insect has yet displayed such persistent immobility, though I confess that my investigations in this respect have been only superficial. The detail is so thoroughly engraved on my memory that, forty years later, when I want to experiment on the insects which are experts in the art of simulating death, I at once think of the Scarites.

A friend sends me a dozen from Cette, from the very beach on which I once pa.s.sed a delightful morning in the company of this skilful mimic of the dead. They reach me in perfect condition, mixed up in the same package with some Pimeliae (_P. bipunctata_, FAB.), their compatriots in the sands beside the sea. Of these last, a pitiable crew, many have been disembowelled, absolutely emptied; others have merely stumps instead of legs; a few, but only a few, are unwounded.

It was what one might have expected of these Carabidae, lawless hunters one and all. Tragic events took place in the box during the journey from Cette to Serignan. The Scarites gormandized riotously on the peaceable Pimeliae.

Their tracks, which I followed long ago on the actual spot, bore evidence to their nocturnal rounds, apparently in search of their prey, the pot-bellied Pimelia, whose sole defence consists of a strong armour of welded wing-cases.[4] But what can such a cuira.s.s avail against the bandit's ruthless pincers?

[Footnote 4: The Pimelia is a wingless Beetle.--_Translator's Note_.]

He is indeed a mighty hunter, this Nimrod of the sea-sh.o.r.e. All black and glossy, like a jet bugle, his body is divided by a very narrow groove at the waist. His weapon of offence consists of a pair of claw-like mandibles of extraordinary vigour. None of our insects equals him in strength of jaw, if we except the Stag-beetle, who is far better armed, or rather decorated, for the antlered mandibles of the inmate of the oak are ornaments of the male's attire, not a panoply of battle.

The brutal Carabid, the eviscerator of the Pimeliae, knows how strong he is. If I tease him a little on the table, he at once adopts a posture of defence. Well braced upon his short legs, especially the fore-legs, which are toothed like rakes, he dislocates himself in two, so to speak, thanks to the groove that divides him behind the corselet; he proudly raises the fore-part of the body, his wide, heart-shaped thorax and ma.s.sive head, opening his threatening pincers to their full extent. He is now an awesome sight. More: he has the audacity to rush at the finger which has touched him. Here of a surety is one not easily intimidated. I look twice before I handle him.

I lodge my strangers partly under a wire-gauze cover and partly in gla.s.s jars, all supplied with a layer of sand. Each of them without delay digs himself a burrow. The insect bends his head a long way down and, with the points of his mandibles, brought together to form a pick-axe, he hews, digs and excavates with a will. The fore-legs, spread out and armed with hooks, gather the dust and rubbish into a load which is thrust backwards. In this way, a mound rises on the threshold of the burrow. The dwelling grows deeper quickly and by a gentle slope reaches the bottom of the jar.

Checked in the downward direction, the Scarites now digs against the gla.s.s wall and continues his work horizontally until he has obtained a length of nearly twelve inches in all.

This arrangement of the gallery, almost the whole of which runs just under the gla.s.s, is very useful to me, enabling me to follow the insect in the privacy of its home. If I wish to observe its underground operations, all that I need do is to remove the opaque sheath which I have been careful to put over the jar, in order to spare the creature the annoyance of the light.

When the house is deemed to be long enough, the Scarites returns to the entrance, which he works more carefully than the rest. He makes a funnel of it, a pit with s.h.i.+fting, sloping sides. It is the Ant-lion's crater on a larger scale and constructed in a more rustic fas.h.i.+on.

This mouth is continued by an inclined plane, kept free of all rubbish. At the foot of the slope is the vestibule of the horizontal gallery. Here, as a rule, the hunter lurks, motionless, with his pincers half open. He is waiting.

There is a sound overhead. It is a specimen of game which I have just introduced, a Cicada, a luscious morsel. The drowsy trapper at once wakes; he moves his palpi, which quiver with cupidity. Cautiously, step by step, he climbs his inclined plane. He takes a glance outside the funnel. The Cicada is seen.

The Scarites darts out of his pit, runs forward, seizes the Cicada and drags her backwards. The struggle is brief, thanks to the trap of the entrance, which yawns like a funnel to receive even a bulky quarry and contracts into a crumbling precipice that paralyses all resistance.

The slope is fatal: who crosses the brink can no longer escape the murderer.

Head first, the Cicada dives into the abyss, down which the spoiler drags her by successive jerks. She is drawn into the low-ceilinged tunnel. Here the wings cease to flutter, for lack of s.p.a.ce. She reaches the knacker's cellar, at the end of the corridor. The Scarites now works at her for some time with his pincers, in order to reduce her to complete immobility, fearing lest she should escape; then he returns to the mouth of the charnel-house.

It is not everything to possess plenty of game; the question next arises how to consume it in peace. The door is therefore closed against importunate callers, that is to say, the insect fills the entrance to the tunnel with his mound of rubbish. Having taken this precaution, he goes back again and sits down to his meal. He will not reopen his hiding-place nor remake the pit at the entrance until later, when the Cicada has been digested and hunger makes its reappearance. Let us leave the glutton with his quarry.

The brief morning which I spent with him in his native place did not enable me to watch him at his hunting, on the sands of the beach; but the facts gathered in captivity are enough to tell us all about it.

They show us in the Scarites a bold hero who is not to be intimidated by the biggest or strongest adversary.

We have seen him coming up from underground, falling on the pa.s.sers-by, seizing them at some distance from the burrow and dragging them forcibly into his cut-throat den. The Rose-chafer, the Common c.o.c.kchafer are but small deer for him. He dares to attack the Cicada, he dares to dig his hooks into the corpulent Pine-chafer. He is a fearless ruffian, ready for any crime.

Under natural conditions his audacity can be no less. On the contrary, the familiar spots, freedom of movement, unlimited s.p.a.ce and his beloved salt air excite the warrior to yet greater feats of daring.

He has dug himself a refuge in the sand, with a wide, crumbling mouth.

This is not so that he may, like the Ant-lion, wait at the bottom of his funnel for the pa.s.sing of a victim which stumbles on the s.h.i.+fting slope and rolls into the pit. The Scarites disdains these petty poachers' methods, these fowlers' snares; he prefers a run across country.

His long trails on the sand tell us of nocturnal rounds in search of big game, often the Pimelia, sometimes the Half-spotted Scarab.[5] The find is not consumed on the spot. To enjoy it at his ease, he needs the peaceful darkness of the underground manor; and so the captive, seized by one leg with the pincers, is forcibly dragged along the ground.

[Footnote 5: Cf. _The Sacred Beetle and Others_: chaps. ii. and vii.-- _Translator's Note_.]

If no precautions were taken, the introduction of the victim into the burrow would be impracticable, with a huge quarry offering a desperate resistance. But the entrance to the tunnel is a wide crater, with crumbling walls. However large he be, the captive, tugged from below, enters and tumbles into the pit. The crumbling rubbish immediately buries him and paralyses his movements. The thing is done. The bandit now proceeds to close his door and empty his prey's belly.

CHAPTER XIV THE SIMULATION OF DEATH

The first insect that we will put to the question is that audacious disemboweller, the savage Scarites. To provoke his state of inertia is a very simple matter: I handle him for a moment, rolling him between my fingers; better still, I drop him on the table, twice or thrice in succession, from a small height. When the shock due to the fall has been administered and, if need be, repeated, I turn the insect on its back.

This is enough: the prostrate Beetle no longer stirs, lies as though dead. The legs are folded on the belly, the antennae extended like the arms of a cross, the pincers open. A watch beside me tells me the exact minute of the beginning and the end of the experiment. Nothing remains but to wait and especially to arm one's self with patience, for the insect's immobility lasts long enough to become tedious to the observer watching for something to happen.

The duration of the lifeless posture varies greatly on the same day, under the same atmospheric conditions and with the same subject, though I cannot fathom the causes which shorten or lengthen it. How to investigate the external influences, so numerous and often so slight, which intervene in such a case; above all, how to scrutinize the insect's private impressions: these are impenetrable mysteries. Let us confine ourselves to recording the results.

Immobility continues fairly often for as long as fifty minutes; in certain cases, even, it lasts more than an hour. The most frequent length of time averages twenty minutes. If nothing disturbs the Beetle, if I cover him with a gla.s.s shade, protecting him from the Flies, who are importunate visitors in the hot weather prevailing at the time of my experiment, the inertia is complete: not a quiver of the tarsi, nor of the palpi, nor of the antennae. Here indeed is a simulacrum of death, with all its inertia.

At last the apparently deceased comes back to life. The tarsi quiver, those of the fore-legs first; the palpi and the antennae move slowly to and fro: this is the prelude to the awakening. Now the legs begin to kick. The insect bends slightly at its pinched waist; it b.u.t.tresses itself on its head and back; it turns over. There it goes, jogging away, ready to become an apparent corpse once more if I renew my shock tactics.

Let us repeat the experiment immediately. The newly resuscitated Beetle is for a second time lying motionless on his back. He prolongs his make-believe of death longer than he did at first. When he wakes up, I renew the test a third, a fourth, a fifth time, with no intervals of repose. The duration of the motionless condition increases each time. To quote the figures, the five consecutive experiments, from the first to the last, have continued respectively for 17, 20, 25, 33 and 50 minutes. Starting with a quarter of an hour, the att.i.tude of death ends by lasting nearly a whole hour.

Without being constant, similar facts recur repeatedly in my experiments, the duration, of course, varying. They tell us that as a general rule the Scarites lengthens the period of his lifeless posture the oftener the experiment is repeated. Is this a matter of practice, or is it an increase of cunning employed in the hope of finally tiring a too persistent enemy? It would be premature to draw conclusions: the cross-examination of the insect has not yet been thorough enough.

Let us wait. Besides, we need not imagine that it is possible to go on like this until our patience is exhausted. Sooner or later, flurried by my pestering, the Scarites refuses to sham dead. Scarcely is he laid on his back after a fall, when he turns over and takes to his heels, as though he judged a stratagem which succeeded so indifferently to be henceforth useless.

If we were to stop here, it would certainly seem that the insect, a cunning hoaxer, seeks, as a means of defence, to cheat those who attack him. He counterfeits death; he repeats the process, becoming more persistent in his fraud in proportion as the aggression is repeated; he abandons his trickery when he deems it futile. But hitherto we have subjected him only to a friendly examination-in-chief. The time has come to put a string of searching questions and to trick the trickster if there be really any deception.

The Beetle under experiment is lying on the table. He feels beneath him a hard body which gives him no chance of digging. As he cannot hope to take refuge underground, an easy task for his nimble and vigorous tools, the Scarites lies low in his death-like pose, keeping it up, if need be, for an hour. If he were reclining on the sand, the loose soil with which he is so familiar, would he not regain his activity more rapidly, would he not at least betray by a few twitches his desire to escape into the bas.e.m.e.nt?

I was expecting to see him do so; and I was mistaken. Whether I place him on wood, gla.s.s, sand or garden mould, the Beetle in no way modifies his tactics. On a surface readily excavated he continues his immobility as long as on an una.s.sailable surface.

This indifference to the nature of the support half opens the door to doubt; what follows opens it wide. The patient is on the table before me and I watch him closely. With his gleaming eyes, overshadowed by his antennae, he also sees me; he watches me; he observes me, if I may so express myself. What can be the visual impression of the insect when face to face with that monstrosity, man? How does the pigmy measure the enormous monument that is the human body? Seen from the depths of the infinitely little, the immense perhaps is nothing.

We will not go so far as that; we will admit that the insect watches me, recognizes me as his persecutor. So long as I am here, he will suspect me and refuse to budge. If he does decide to do so, it will be after he has exhausted my patience. Let us therefore move away. Then, since any trickery will be needless, he will hasten to take to his legs again and make off.

I move ten paces farther from him, to the other end of the room. I hide, I do not move a muscle, for fear of breaking the silence. Will the insect pick itself up? No, my precautions are superfluous. Alone, left to itself, perfectly quiet, it remains motionless for as long a time as when I was standing close beside it.

Perhaps the clear-sighted Scarites has seen me in my corner, at the other end of the room; perhaps a subtle scent has revealed my presence to him. We will do more, then. I cover him with a bell-gla.s.s which will save him from being worried by the Flies and I leave the room; I go downstairs into the garden. There is no longer anything likely to disturb him. Doors and windows are closed. Not a sound from without; no cause for alarm indoors. What will happen in the midst of that profound silence?

Nothing more and nothing less than usual. After twenty, forty minutes'

waiting out of doors, I come upstairs again and return to my insect. I find him as I left him, lying motionless on his back.

This experiment, many times repeated with different subjects, throws a vivid light upon the question. It expressly a.s.sures us that the att.i.tude of death is not the ruse of an insect in danger. Here there is nothing to alarm the creature. Around him all is silence, solitude, repose. When he persists in his immobility it cannot now be to deceive an enemy. I have no doubt about it: there is something else involved.

Besides, why should he need special defensive artifices? I could understand that a weak, pacific, ill-protected insect might resort to ruses when in danger; but in him, the warlike bandit, so well armoured, it is more than I can understand. No insect on his native sea-sh.o.r.e has the strength to resist him. The most powerful of them, the Sacred Beetle and the Pimelia, are easy-going creatures which, so far from molesting him, are fine booty for his burrow.

Can he be threatened by the birds? It is very doubtful. As a Carabus, he is saturated with acrid humours which must make his body a far from pleasing mouthful. For the rest, he lives hidden from the light of day in a burrow where no one sees him; he emerges only at night, when the birds are no longer inspecting the beach. There are no beaks about for him to fear.

And this butcher of the Pimeliae and even occasionally of the Sacred Beetles, this bully whom no danger threatens, is supposed to be such a coward as to sham death on the slightest alarm! I take the liberty of doubting this more and more.

I am confirmed in my doubts by the Smooth-skinned Scarites (_S.

lavigatus_, FAB.), a denizen of the same sh.o.r.es. The first insect is a giant; the second, by comparison, is a dwarf. Otherwise he displays the same shape, the same jet-black costume, the same armour, the same habits of brigandage. Well, the Smooth-skinned Scarites, in spite of his weakness and his smallness, is almost ignorant of the trick of pretending to be dead. When molested for a moment and then turned on his back, he at once picks himself up and flees. I can hardly obtain a few seconds' immobility; once only, daunted by my obstinacy, the dwarf remains motionless for a quarter of an hour.

How different from the giant, motionless the moment that he is thrown upon his back, sometimes picking himself up only after an hour of inaction! It is the reverse of what ought to happen, if the apparent death were really a defensive ruse. The giant, confident in his strength, should disdain this cowardly posture; the timid dwarf should be quick to have recourse to it. And it is just the other way about.

What is there behind all this?