Social Life in the Insect World by Jean-Henri Fabre, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here .  THE GOLDEN GARDENER—COURTSHIP CHAPTER IX. THE GOLDEN GARDENER—COURTSHIP It is generally recognized that the Carabus auratus is an active exterminator of caterpillars; on this account in particular it deserves its title of Gardener Beetle; it is the vigilant policeman of our kitchen-gardens, our flower-beds and herbaceous borders. If my inquiries add nothing to its established reputation in this respect, they will nevertheless, in the following pages, show the insect in a light as yet unsuspected. The ferocious beast of prey, the ogre who devours all creatures that are not too str ong for him, is himself killed and eaten: by his fellows, and by many others. Standing one day in the shadow of the plane-trees that grow before my door, I see a Golden Gardener go by as if on pressing business. The pilgrim is well met; he will go to swell the contents of my vivarium. In capturing him I notice that the extremities of the wing-covers are slightly damaged. Is this the result of a struggle between rivals? There is nothing to tell me. The essential thing is that the insect should not be handicapped by any serious injury. Inspected, and found to be without any serious wound and fit for service, it is introduced into the glass dwelling of its twenty-five future companions. Next day I look for the new inmate. It is dead. Its comrades have attacked it during the night and have cleaned out its abdomen, insufficiently protected by the damaged wing-covers. The operation has been performed very cleanly, without any dismemberment. Claws, head, corselet, all are correctly in place; the abdomen only has a gaping wound through which its contents have been removed. What remains is a kind of golden shell, formed of the two conjoined elytra. The shell of an oyster emptied of its inmate is not more empty. This result astonishes me, for I have taken good care that the cage should never be long without food. The snail, the pine-cockchafer, the Praying Mantis, the lob-worm, the caterpillar, and other favourite insects, have all been given in alternation and i n sufficient quantities. In devouring a brother whose damaged armour lent itself to any easy attack my beetles had not the excuse of hunger. Is it their custom to kill the wounded and to eviscerate such of their fellows as suffer damage? Pity is unknown among insects. At the sight of the desperate struggles of a crippled fellow-creature none of the same family will cry a halt, none will attempt to come to its aid. Among the carnivorous insects the matter may develop to a tragic termination. With them, the passers-by will often run to the cripple. But do they do so in order to help it? By no means: merely to taste its flesh, and, if they find it agreeable, to perform the most radical cure of its ills by devouring it. It is possible, therefore, that the Gardener with the injured wing-covers had tempted his fellows by the sight of his imperfectly covered back. They saw in their defenceless comrade a permissible subject for dissection. But do they respect one another when there is no previous wound? At first there was every appearance that their relations were perfectly pacific. During their sanguinary meals there is never a scuffle between the feasters; nothing but mere mouth-to-mouth thefts. There are no quarrels during the long siestas in the shelter of the board. Half buried in the cool earth, my twenty-five subjects slumber and digest their food in peace; they lie sociably near one another, each in his little trench. If I raise the plank they awake and are off, running hither and thither, constantly encountering one another without hostilities. The profoundest peace is reigning, and to all appearances will last for ever, when in the early days of June I find a dead Garden er. Its limbs are intact; it is reduced to the condition of a mere golden husk; like the defenceless beetle I have already spoken of, it is as empty as an oyster-shell. Let us examine the remains. All is intact, save the huge breach in the abdomen. So the insect was sound and unhurt when the others attacked it. A few days pass, and another Gardener is killed and dealt with as before, with no disorder in the component pieces of its armour. Let us place the dead insect on its belly; it is to all appearances untouched. Place it on its back; it is hollow, and has no trace of flesh left beneath its carapace. A little later, and I find another empty relic; then another, and yet another, until the population of my menagerie is rapidly shrinking. If this insensate massacre continues I shall soon find my cage depopulated. Are my beetles hoary with age? Do they die a natural death, and do the survivors then clean out the bodies? Or is the population being reduced at the expense of sound and healthy insects? It is not easy to elucidate the matter, since the atrocities are commonly perpetrated in the night. But, finally, with vigilance, on two occasions, I surprise the beetles at their work in the light of day. Towards the middle of June a female attacks a male before my eyes. The male is recognisable by his slightly smaller size. The operation commences. Raising the ends of the wing-covers, the assailant seizes her victim by the extremity of the abdomen, from the dorsal side. She pulls at him furiously, eagerly munching with her mandibles. The victim, who is in the prime of life, does not defend himself, nor turn upon his assailant. He pulls h is hardest in the opposite direction to free himself from those terrible fangs; he advances and recoils as he is overpowered by or overpowers the assassin; and there his resistance ends. The struggle lasts a quarter of an hour. Other beetles, passing by, call a halt, and seem to say "My turn next!" Finally, redoubling his efforts, the male frees himself and flies. If he had not succeeded in escaping the ferocious female would undoubtedly have eviscerated him. THE GOLDEN GARDENER: THE MATING SEASON OVER, THE MALES ARE EVISCERATED BY THE FEMALES. A few days later I witness a similar scene, but this time the tragedy is played to the end. Once more it is a female who seizes a male from behind. With no other protest except his futile efforts to escape, the victim is forced to submit. The skin finally yields; the wound enlarges, and the viscera are removed and devoured by the matron, who empties the carapace, her head buried in the body of her late companion. The legs of the miserable victim tremble, announcing the end. The murderess takes no notice; she continues to rummage as far as she can reach for the narrowing of the thorax. Nothing is left but the closed boat-shaped wing-covers and the fore parts of the body. The empty shell is left lying on the scene of the tragedy. In this way must have perished the beetles—always males—whose remains I find in the cage from time to time; thus the survivors also will perish. Between the middle of June and the 1st of August the inhabitants of the cage, twenty-five in number at the outset, are reduced to five, all of whom are females. All the males, to the number of twenty, have disappeared, eviscerated and completely emptied. And by whom? Apparently by the females. That this is the case is attested in the first place by the two assaults of which I was perchance the witness; on two occasions, in broad daylight, I saw the female devouring the male, having opened the abdomen under the wing-covers, or having at least attempted to do so. As for the rest of the massacres, although direct observation was lacking, I had one very valuable piece of evidence. As we have seen, the victim does not retaliate, does not defend himself, but simply tries to escape by pulling himself away. If it were a matter of an ordinary fight, a conflict such as might arise in the struggle for life, the creature attacked would obviously retaliate, since he is perfectly well able to do so; in an ordinary conflict he would meet force by force, and return bite for bite. His strength would enable him to come well out of a struggle, but the foolish creature allows himself to be devoured without retaliating. It seems as though an invincible repugnance prevents him from offering resistance and in turn devouring the devourer. This tolerance reminds one of the scorpion of Languedoc, which on the termination of the hymeneal rites allows the female to devour him without attempting to employ his weapon, the venomous dagger which would form a formidable defence; it reminds us also of the male of the Praying Mantis, which still embraces the female though reduced to a headless trunk, while the latter devours him by small mouthfuls, with no rebellion or defence on his part. There are other examples of hymeneal rites to which the male offers no resistance. The males of my menagerie of Gardeners, one and all eviscerated, speak of similar customs. They are the victims of the females when the latter have no further use for them. For four months, from April to August, the insects pair off continually; sometimes tentatively, but usually the mating is effective. The business of mating is all but endless for these fiery spirits. The Gardener is prompt and businesslike in his affairs of the heart. In the midst of the crowd, with no preliminary courtship, the male throws himself upon the female. The female thus embraced raises her head a trifle as a sign of acquiescence, while the cavalier beats the back of her neck with his antennæ. The embrace is brief, and they abruptly separate; after a little refreshment the two parties are ready for other adventures, and yet others, so long as there are males available. After the feast, a brief and primitive wooing; after the wooing, the feast; in such delights the life of the Gardener passes. The females of my collection were in no proper ratio to the number of aspiring lovers; there were five females to twenty males. No matter; there was no rivalry, no hustling; all went peacefully and sooner or later each was satisfied. I should have preferred a better proportioned assembly. Chance, not choice, had given me that at my disposal. In the early spring I had collected all the Gardeners I could find under the stones of the neighbourhood, without distinguishing the sexes, for they are not easy to recognise merely by external characteristics. Later on I learned by watching them that a sligh t excess of size was the distinctive sign of the female. My menagerie, so ill-proportioned in the matter of sex, was therefore the result of chance. I do not suppose this preponderance of males exists in natural conditions. On the other hand, one never sees such numerous groups at liberty, in the shelter of the same stone. The Gardener lives an almost solitary life; it is rarely that one finds two or three beneath the same object of shelter. The gathering in my menagerie was thus exceptional, although it did not lead to confusion. There is plenty of room in the glass cage for excursions to a distance and for all their habitual manœuvres. Those who wish for solitude can obtain it; those who wish for company need not seek it. For the rest, captivity cannot lie heavily on them; that is proved by their frequent feasts, their constant mating. They could not thrive better in the open; perhaps not so well, for food is less abundant under natural conditions. In the matter of well-being the prisoners are in a normal condition, favourable to the maintenance of their usual habits. It is true that encounters of beetle with beetle are more frequent here than in the open. Hence, no doubt, arise more opportunities for the females to persecute the males whom they no longer require; to fall upon them from the rear and eviscerate them. This pursuit of their onetime lovers is aggravated by their confined quarters; but it certainly is not caused thereby, for such customs are not suddenly originated. The mating season over, the female encountering a male in the open must evidently regard him as fair game, and devour him as the termination of the matrimonial rites. I have turned over many stones, but have never chanced upon this spectacle, but what has occurred in my menagerie is sufficient to convince me. What a world these beetles live in, where the matron devours her mate so soon as her fertility delivers her from the need of him! And how lightly the males must be regarded by custom, to be served in this manner! Is this practice of post-matrimonial cannibalism a general custom in the insect world? For the moment, I can recollect only three characteristic examples: those of the Praying Mantis, the Golden Gardener, and the scorpion of Languedoc. An analogous yet less brutal practice—for the victim is defunct before he is eaten—is a characteristic of the Locust family. The female of the white-faced Decticus will eagerly devour the body of her dead mate, as will the Green Grasshopper. To a certain extent this custom is excused by the nature of the insect's diet; the Decticus and the Grasshopper are essentially carnivorous. Encountering a dead body of their own species, a female will devour it, even if it be the body of her latest mate. But what are we to say in palliation of the vegetarians? At the approach of the breeding season, before the eggs are laid, the Ephippigera turns upon her still living mate, disembowels him, and eats as much of him as her appetite will allow. The cheerful Cricket shows herself in a new light at this season; she attacks the mate who lately wooed her with such impassioned serenades; she tears his wings, breaks his musical thighs, and even swallows a few mouthfuls of the instrumentalist. It is probable that this deadly aversion of the female for the male at the end of the mating season is fairly common, especially among the carnivorous insects. But what is the object of this atrocious custom? That is a question I shall not fail to answer when circu mstances permit. 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 (2006). Social Life in the Insect World. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved October https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/18350/pg18350-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 .

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