I ask myself if I am not here the victim of an illusion

The Life and Love of the Insect by Jean-Henri Fabre, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here. THE SPANISH COPRIS

CHAPTER V. 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 [64]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. [65]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 [66]twenty centimetres.1 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 [67]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 [68]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’iôu2 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 [69]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 decimetre3 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.4 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 [70]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 [71]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 [72]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.

Fig. 5.—The Copris’s pill: first state.

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.

PLATE IV

1 and 2. The Spanish Copris, male and female.

3. The pair jointly kneading the big loaf, which, divided into egg-shaped pills, will furnish provisions for each grub of the brood.

4. The mother alone in her burrow: five pills are already finished; a sixth is in process of construction.

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 [73]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.

Fig. 6.—The Spanish Copris’s pill dug out cupwise to receive the egg.

Fig. 7.—The Spanish Copris’s pill: section showing the hatching-chamber and the egg.

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 [74]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 [75]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.

About HackerNoon Book Series: We bring you the most important technical, scientific, and insightful public domain books.

This book is part of the public domain. Jean-Henri Fabre (2022). The Life and Love of the Insect. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/68974/pg68974-images.html

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org, located at https://www.gutenberg.org/policy/license.html.