第70章 THE METHOD OF THE AMMOPHILAE(5)

Two species, the Silky Ammophila (A. holoserica, FAB.) and Jules' Ammophila (See in the first volume of the "Souvenirs entomologiques" what I mean by this denomination.--Author's Note.), affect this curious prey, which moves with the stride of a pair of compasses. The first, often renewed under glass during the greater part of August, has always refused my offers; the second, her contemporary, has, on the contrary, promptly accepted them.

I present Jules' Ammophila with a slender, brownish Looper which I caught on the jasmine. The attack is not slow in coming. The caterpillar is grabbed by the neck: lively contortions of the victim, which rolls the aggressor over and drags her along, now uppermost, now undermost in the struggle. First the thorax is stung, in its three rings, from back to front. The sting lingers longest near the throat, in the first segment.

This done, the Ammophila releases her victim and proceeds to stamp her tarsi, to polish her wings, to stretch herself. Again I observe the acrobatic postures, the forehead touching the ground, the hinder part of the body raised. This mimic triumph is the same as that of the huntress of the Grey Worm. Then the Looper is once more seized. Despite its contortions, which are not in the least abated by the three wounds in the thorax, it is stung from front to back in each segment still unwounded, no matter how many, whether supplied with legs or not. I expected to see the sting refrain more or less in the long interval which separates the true legs in front from the pro-legs at the back (Fleshy legs found on the abdominal segments of caterpillars and certain other larvae.--Translator's Note.): segments devoid of organs of defence or locomotion did not seem to me to deserve conscientious surgery. I was mistaken: not a segment of the Looper is spared, not even the last ones. It is true that these, being eminently capable of catching hold with their false legs, would be dangerous later were the Wasp to neglect them.

I observe, however, that the lancet works more rapidly in the second part of the operation than in the first, either because the caterpillar, half subjugated by the triple wound at the outset, is easier to reach with the sting, or because the segments more remote from the head are rendered harmless with a smaller injection of poison. Nowhere do we see repeated the care expended upon paralysing the thorax, still less the insistent attention to the first segment. On returning to her Looper after the entr'acte devoted to the joys of success, the Ammophila stabs so swiftly that, on one occasion, I saw her obliged to begin all over again. Lightly stung along its whole length, the victim still struggles. Without hesitation, the operator unsheathes her scalpel for the second time and operates on the Looper afresh, with the exception of the thorax, which was already sufficiently anaesthetized. This done, all is in order; there is no more movement.

After the stiletto the hooks of the mandibles rarely fail to intervene.

Long and curved, they nibble at the paralysed victim's neck, sometimes from above, sometimes from below. It is a repetition of what the Hairy Ammophila showed us: the same sudden squeezes of the pincers, with rather long intervals between. These intervals, these measured bites and the insect's watchful attitude have every appearance of telling us that the operator is noting the effect produced before giving a fresh pinch of the nippers.

It will be seen how valuable is the evidence of Jules' Ammophila: it tells us that the immolaters of Looper caterpillars and those of ordinary caterpillars follow precisely the same method; that victims displaying very dissimilar external structure do not entail any modification of the operative tactics so long as the internal organization remains the same.

The number, arrangement and degree of mutual independence of the nerve-centres guide the sting; the anatomy of the game, rather than its form, controls the huntress' tactics.

Let me mention, before I dismiss the subject, a superb example of this marvellous anatomical discrimination. I once took from between the legs of a Hairy Ammophila, which had just paralysed it, a caterpillar of Dicranura vinula. What a strange capture compared with the ordinary caterpillar!

Bridling in thick folds beneath its pink neckerchief, its fore-part raised in a sphinx-like attitude, its hinder-part slowly waving two long caudal threads, the curious animal is no caterpillar to the schoolboy who brings it to me, nor to the man who comes upon it while cutting his bundle of osiers; but it is a caterpillar to the Ammophila, who treats it accordingly. I explore the queer creature's segments with the point of a needle. All are insensitive; all therefore have been stung.