THE MANTIS: HER HUNTING

The Life of the Grasshopper by Jean-Henri Fabre, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here. THE MANTIS: HER HUNTING

CHAPTER VI. THE MANTIS: HER HUNTING

Another creature of the south, at least as interesting as the Cicada, but much less famous, because it makes no noise. Had Heaven granted it a pair of cymbals, the one thing needed, its renown would eclipse the great musician’s, for it is most unusual in both shape and habits. Folk hereabouts call it lou Prègo-Diéu, the animal that prays to God. Its official name is the Praying Mantis (M. religiosa, Lin.).

The language of science and the peasant’s artless vocabulary agree in this case and represent the queer creature as a pythoness delivering her oracles or an ascetic rapt in pious ecstasy. The comparison dates a long way back. Even in the time of the Greeks the insect was called Μάντις, the divine, the prophet. The tiller of the soil is not particular about analogies: where points of resemblance are not too clear, he will make [114]up for their deficiencies. He saw on the sun-scorched herbage an insect of imposing appearance, drawn up majestically in a half-erect posture. He noticed its gossamer wings, broad and green, trailing like long veils of finest lawn; he saw its fore-legs, its arms so to speak, raised to the sky in a gesture of invocation. That was enough; popular imagination did the rest; and behold the bushes from ancient times stocked with Delphic priestesses, with nuns in orison.

Good people, with your childish simplicity, how great was your mistake! Those sanctimonious airs are a mask for Satanic habits; those arms folded in prayer are cut-throat weapons: they tell no beads, they slay whatever passes within range. Forming an exception which one would never have suspected in the herbivorous order of the Orthoptera, the Mantis feeds exclusively on living prey. She is the tigress of the peaceable entomological tribes, the ogress in ambush who levies a tribute of fresh meat. Picture her with sufficient strength; and her carnivorous appetites, combined with her traps of horrible perfection, would make her the terror of the country-side. The Prègo-Diéu would become a devilish vampire.[115]

Apart from her lethal implement, the Mantis has nothing to inspire dread. She is not without a certain beauty, in fact, with her slender figure, her elegant bust, her pale-green colouring and her long gauze wings. No ferocious mandibles, opening like shears; on the contrary, a dainty pointed muzzle that seems made for billing and cooing. Thanks to a flexible neck, quite independent of the thorax, the head is able to move freely, to turn to right or left, to bend, to lift itself. Alone among insects, the Mantis directs her gaze; she inspects and examines; she almost has a physiognomy.

Great indeed is the contrast between the body as a whole, with its very pacific aspect, and the murderous mechanism of the fore-legs, which are correctly described as raptorial. The haunch is uncommonly long and powerful. Its function is to throw forward the rat-trap, which does not await its victim but goes in search of it. The snare is decked out with some show of finery. The base of the haunch is adorned on the inner surface with a pretty, black mark, having a white spot in the middle; and a few rows of bead-like dots complete the ornamentation.

The thigh, longer still, a sort of flattened [116]spindle, carries on the front half of its lower surface two rows of sharp spikes. In the inner row there are a dozen, alternately black and green, the green being shorter than the black. This alternation of unequal lengths increases the number of cogs and improves the effectiveness of the weapon. The outer row is simpler and has only four teeth. Lastly, three spurs, the longest of all, stand out behind the two rows. In short, the thigh is a saw with two parallel blades, separated by a groove in which the leg lies when folded back.

The leg, which moves very easily on its joint with the thigh, is likewise a double-edged saw. The teeth are smaller, more numerous and closer together than those on the thigh. It ends in a strong hook whose point vies with the finest needle for sharpness, a hook fluted underneath and having a double blade like a curved pruning-knife.

This hook, a most perfect instrument for piercing and tearing, has left me many a painful memory. How often, when Mantis-hunting, clawed by the insect which I had just caught and not having both hands at liberty, have I been obliged to ask somebody else to release me from my tenacious captive! [117]To try to free yourself by force, without first disengaging the claws implanted in your flesh, would expose you to scratches similar to those produced by the thorns of a rose-tree. None of our insects is so troublesome to handle. The Mantis claws you with her pruning-hooks, pricks you with her spikes, seizes you in her vice and makes self-defence almost impossible if, wishing to keep your prize alive, you refrain from giving the pinch of the thumb that would put an end to the struggle by crushing the creature.

When at rest, the trap is folded and pressed back against the chest and looks quite harmless. There you have the insect praying. But, should a victim pass, the attitude of prayer is dropped abruptly. Suddenly unfolded, the three long sections of the machine throw to a distance their terminal grapnel, which harpoons the prey and, in returning, draws it back between the two saws. The vice closes with a movement like that of the fore-arm and the upper arm; and all is over: Locusts, Grasshoppers and others even more powerful, once caught in the mechanism with its four rows of teeth, are irretrievably lost. Neither their desperate [118]fluttering nor their kicking will make the terrible engine release its hold.

An uninterrupted study of the Mantis’ habits is not practicable in the open fields; we must rear her at home. There is no difficulty about this: she does not mind being interned under glass, on condition that she be well fed. Offer her choice viands, served up fresh daily, and she will hardly feel her absence from the bushes.

As cages for my captives I have some ten large wire-gauze dish-covers, the same that are used to protect meat from the Flies. Each stands in a pan filled with sand. A dry tuft of thyme and a flat stone on which the laying may be done later constitute all the furniture. These huts are placed in a row on the large table in my insect laboratory, where the sun shines on them for the best part of the day. I instal my captives in them, some singly, some in groups.

It is in the second fortnight of August that I begin to come upon the adult Mantis in the withered grass and on the brambles by the road-side. The females, already notably corpulent, are more frequent from day to day. Their slender companions, on the other hand, are rather scarce; and I sometimes [119]have a good deal of difficulty in making up my couples, for there is an appalling consumption of these dwarfs in the cages. Let us keep these atrocities for later and speak first of the females.

They are great eaters, whose maintenance, when it has to last for some months, is none too easy. The provisions, which are nibbled at disdainfully and nearly all wasted, have to be renewed almost every day. I trust that the Mantis is more economical on her native bushes. When game is not plentiful, no doubt she devours every atom of her catch; in my cages she is extravagant, often dropping and abandoning the rich morsel after a few mouthfuls, without deriving any further benefit from it. This appears to be her particular method of beguiling the tedium of captivity.

To cope with these extravagant ways I have to employ assistants. Two or three small local idlers, bribed by the promise of a slice of melon or bread-and-butter, go morning and evening to the grass-plots in the neighbourhood and fill their game-bags—cases made of reed-stumps—with live Locusts and Grasshoppers. I on my side, net in hand, make a daily circuit of my enclosure, [120]in the hope of obtaining some choice morsel for my boarders.

These tit-bits are intended to show me to what lengths the Mantis’ strength and daring can go. They include the big Grey Locust (Pachytylus cinerescens, Fab.), who is larger than the insect that will consume him; the White-faced Decticus, armed with a vigorous pair of mandibles whereof our fingers would do well to fight shy; the quaint Tryxalis, who wears a pyramid-shaped mitre on her head; the Vine Ephippiger,1 who clashes cymbals and sports a sword at the bottom of her pot-belly. To this assortment of game that is not any too easy to tackle, let us add two monsters, two of the largest Spiders of the district: the Silky Epeira, whose flat, festooned abdomen is the size of a franc piece; and the Cross Spider, or Diadem Epeira,2 who is hideously hairy and obese.

I cannot doubt that the Mantis attacks such adversaries in the open, when I see her, [121]under my covers, boldly giving battle to whatever comes in sight. Lying in wait among the bushes, she must profit by the fat prizes offered by chance even as, in the wire cage, she profits by the treasures due to my generosity. Those big hunts, full of danger, are no new thing; they form part of her normal existence. Nevertheless they appear to be rare, for want of opportunity, perhaps to the Mantis’ deep regret.

Locusts of all kinds, Butterflies, Dragon-flies, large Flies, Bees and other moderate-sized captures are what we usually find in the lethal limbs. Still the fact remains that, in my cages, the daring huntress recoils before nothing. Sooner or later, Grey Locust and Decticus, Epeira and Tryxalis are harpooned, held tight between the saws and crunched with gusto. The facts are worth describing.

At the sight of the Grey Locust who has heedlessly approached along the trelliswork of the cover, the Mantis gives a convulsive shiver and suddenly adopts a terrifying posture. An electric shock would not produce a more rapid effect. The transition is so abrupt, the attitude so threatening that the observer beholding it for the first time at [122]once hesitates and draws back his fingers, apprehensive of some unknown danger. Old hand as I am, I cannot even now help being startled, should I happen to be thinking of something else.

You see before you, most unexpectedly, a sort of bogey-man or Jack-in-the-box. The wing-covers open and are turned back on either side, slantingly; the wings spread to their full extent and stand erect like parallel sails or like a huge heraldic crest towering over the back; the tip of the abdomen curls upwards like a crosier, rises and falls, relaxing with short jerks and a sort of sough, a “Whoof! Whoof!” like that of a Turkey-cock spreading his tail. It reminds one of the puffing of a startled Adder.

Planted defiantly on its four hind-legs, the insect holds its long bust almost upright. The murderous legs, originally folded and pressed together upon the chest, open wide, forming a cross with the body and revealing the arm-pits decorated with rows of beads and a black spot with a white dot in the centre. These two faint imitations of the eyes in a Peacock’s tail, together with the dainty ivory beads, are warlike ornaments kept hidden at ordinary times. They are [123]taken from the jewel-case only at the moment when we have to make ourselves brave and terrible for battle.

Motionless in her strange posture, the Mantis watches the Locust, with her eyes fixed in his direction and her head turning as on a pivot whenever the other changes his place. The object of this attitudinizing is evident: the Mantis wants to strike terror into her dangerous quarry, to paralyze it with fright, for, unless demoralized by fear, it would prove too formidable.

Does she succeed in this? Under the shiny head of the Decticus, behind the long face of the Locust, who can tell what passes? No sign of excitement betrays itself to our eyes on those impassive masks. Nevertheless it is certain that the threatened one is aware of the danger. He sees standing before him a spectre, with uplifted claws, ready to fall upon him; he feels that he is face to face with death; and he fails to escape while there is yet time. He who excels in leaping and could so easily hop out of reach of those talons, he, the big-thighed jumper, remains stupidly where he is, or even draws nearer with a leisurely step.

They say that little birds, paralysed with [124]terror before the open jaws of the Snake, spell-bound by the reptile’s gaze, lose their power of flight and allow themselves to be snapped up. The Locust often behaves in much the same way. See him within reach of the enchantress. The two grapnels fall, the claws strike, the double saws close and clutch. In vain the poor wretch protests: he chews space with his mandibles and, kicking desperately, strikes nothing but the air. His fate is sealed. The Mantis furls her wings, her battle-standard; she resumes her normal posture; and the meal begins.

In attacking the Tryxalis and the Ephippiger, less dangerous game than the Grey Locust and the Decticus, the spectral attitude is less imposing and of shorter duration. Often the throw of the grapnels is sufficient. This is likewise so in the case of the Epeira, who is grasped round the body with not a thought of her poison-fangs. With the smaller Locusts, the usual fare in my cages as in the open fields, the Mantis seldom employs her intimidation-methods and contents herself with seizing the reckless one that passes within her reach.

When the prey to be captured is able to offer serious resistance, the Mantis has at [125]her service a pose that terrorizes and fascinates her quarry and gives her claws a means of hitting with certainty. Her rat-traps close on a demoralized victim incapable of defence. She frightens her victim into immobility by suddenly striking a spectral attitude.

The wings play a great part in this fantastic pose. They are very wide, green on the outer edge, colourless and transparent every elsewhere. They are crossed lengthwise by numerous veins, which spread in the shape of a fan. Other veins, transversal and finer, intersect the first at right angles and with them form a multitude of meshes. In the spectral attitude, the wings are displayed and stand upright in two parallel planes that almost touch each other, like the wings of a Butterfly at rest. Between them the curled tip of the abdomen moves with sudden starts. The sort of breath which I have compared with the puffing of an Adder in a posture of defence comes from this rubbing of the abdomen against the nerves of the wings. To imitate the strange sound, all that you need do is to pass your nail quickly over the upper surface of an unfurled wing.

Wings are essential to the male, a slender [126]pigmy who has to wander from thicket to thicket at mating-time. He has a well-developed pair, more than sufficient for his flight, the greatest range of which hardly amounts to four or five of our paces. The little fellow is exceedingly sober in his appetites. On rare occasions, in my cages, I catch him eating a lean Locust, an insignificant, perfectly harmless creature. This means that he knows nothing of the spectral attitude, which is of no use to an unambitious hunter of his kind.

On the other hand, the advantage of the wings to the female is not very obvious, for she is inordinately stout at the time when her eggs ripen. She climbs, she runs; but, weighed down by her corpulence, she never flies. Then what is the object of wings, of wings, too, which are seldom matched for breadth?

The question becomes more significant if we consider the Grey Mantis (Ameles decolor), who is closely akin to the Praying Mantis. The male is winged and is even pretty quick at flying. The female, who drags a great belly full of eggs, reduces her wings to stumps and, like the cheese-makers of Auvergne and Savoy, wears a short-tailed [127]jacket. For one who is not meant to leave the dry grass and the stones, this abbreviated costume is more suitable than superfluous gauze furbelows. The Grey Mantis is right to retain but a mere vestige of the cumbrous sails.

Is the other wrong to keep her wings, to exaggerate them, even though she never flies? Not at all. The Praying Mantis hunts big game. Sometimes a formidable prey appears in her hiding-place. A direct attack might be fatal. The thing to do is first to intimidate the new-comer, to conquer his resistance by terror. With this object she suddenly unfurls her wings into a ghost’s winding-sheet. The huge sails incapable of flight are hunting-implements. This stratagem is not needed by the little Grey Mantis, who captures feeble prey, such as Gnats and new-born Locusts. The two huntresses, who have similar habits and, because of their stoutness, are neither of them able to fly, are dressed to suit the difficulties of the ambuscade. The first, an impetuous amazon, puffs her wings into a threatening standard; the second, a modest fowler, reduces them to a pair of scanty coat-tails.

In a fit of hunger, after a fast of some [128]days’ duration, the Praying Mantis will gobble up a Grey Locust whole, except for the wings, which are too dry; and yet the victim of her voracity is as big as herself, or even bigger. Two hours are enough for consuming this monstrous head of game. An orgy of the sort is rare. I have witnessed it once or twice and have always wondered how the gluttonous creature found room for so much food and how it reversed in its favour the axiom that the cask must be greater than its contents. I can but admire the lofty privileges of a stomach through which matter merely passes, being at once digested, dissolved and done away with.

The usual bill of fare in my cages consists of Locusts of greatly varied species and sizes. It is interesting to watch the Mantis nibbling her Acridian, firmly held in the grip of her two murderous fore-legs. Notwithstanding the fine, pointed muzzle, which seems scarcely made for this gorging, the whole dish disappears, with the exception of the wings, of which only the slightly fleshy base is consumed. The legs, the tough skin, everything goes down. Sometimes the Mantis seizes one of the big hinder thighs by the knuckle-end, lifts it to her mouth, [129]tastes it and crunches it with a little air of satisfaction. The Locust’s fat and juicy thigh may well be a choice morsel for her, even as a leg of mutton is for us.

The prey is first attacked in the neck. While one of the two lethal legs holds the victim transfixed through the middle of the body, the other presses the head and makes the neck open upwards. The Mantis’ muzzle roots and nibbles at this weak point in the armour with some persistency. A large wound appears in the head. The Locust gradually ceases kicking and becomes a lifeless corpse; and, from this moment, freer in its movements, the carnivorous insect picks and chooses its morsel.

This preliminary gnawing of the neck is too regular an occurrence to be purposeless. Let us indulge in a digression which will tell us more about it. In June I often find on the lavender in the enclosure two small Crab Spiders (Thomisus onustus, Walck.,3 and T. rotundatus, Walck.). One is satin-white and has pink and green rings round her legs; the other is inky-black and has an abdomen encircled with red with a foliaceous [130]central patch. They are pretty Spiders, both of them, and they walk sideways, after the manner of Crabs. They do not know how to weave a hunting-net; the little silk which they possess is reserved exclusively for the downy satchel containing the eggs. Their plan of campaign therefore is to lie in ambush on the flowers and to fling themselves unexpectedly on the quarry when it arrives on pilfering intent.

Their favourite prey is the Hive-bee. I often come upon them with their prize, at times grabbed by the neck and at others by any part of the body, even the tip of a wing. In each and every case the Bee is dead, with her legs hanging limply and her tongue out.

The poison-fangs planted in the neck set me thinking; I see in them a characteristic remarkably like the practice of the Mantis when starting on her Locust. And then arises another question: how does the weak Spider, who is vulnerable in every part of her soft body, manage to get hold of a prey like the Bee, stronger than herself, quicker in movement and armed with a sting that can inflict a mortal wound?

The difference in physical strength and force of arms between assailant and assailed [131]is so very great that a contest of this kind seems impossible unless some netting intervene, some silken toils that can shackle and bind the formidable creature. The contrast would be no more intense were the Sheep to take it into her head to fly at the Wolf’s throat. And yet the daring attack takes place and victory goes to the weaker, as is proved by the numbers of dead Bees whom I see sucked for hours by the Thomisi. The relative weakness must be made good by some special art; the Spider must possess a strategy that enables her to surmount the apparently insurmountable difficulty.

To watch events on the lavender-borders would expose me to long, fruitless waits. It is better myself to make the preparations for the duel. I place a Thomisus under a cover with a bunch of lavender sprinkled with a few drops of honey. Some three or four live Bees complete the establishment.

The Bees pay no heed to their redoubtable neighbour. They flutter around the trellised enclosure; from time to time they go and take a sip from the honeyed flowers, sometimes quite close to the Spider, not a quarter of an inch away. They seem utterly unaware of their danger. The experience of [132]centuries has taught them nothing about the terrible cut-throat. The Thomisus, on her side, waits motionless on a spike of lavender, near the honey. Her four front legs, which are longer than the others, are spread out and slightly raised, in readiness for attack.

A Bee comes to drink at the drop of honey. This is the moment. The Spider springs forward and with her fangs seizes the imprudent one by the tip of the wings, while her legs hold the victim in a tight embrace. A few seconds pass, during which the Bee struggles as best she can against the aggressor on her back, out of the reach of her dagger. This fight at close quarters cannot last long; the Bee would release herself from the other’s grip. And so the Spider lets go the wing and suddenly bites her prey in the back of the neck. Once the fangs drive home, it is all over: death ensues. The Bee is slain. Of her turbulent activity naught lingers but some faint quivers of the tarsi, final convulsions which are soon at an end.

Still holding her prey by the nape of the neck, the Thomisus feasts not on the body, which remains intact, but on the blood, which is slowly sucked. When the neck is drained dry, another spot is attacked, on the abdomen, [133]the thorax, anywhere. This explains why my observations in the open air showed me the Thomisus with her fangs fixed now in the neck, now in some other part of the Bee. In the first case, the capture was a recent one and the murderess still retained her original posture; in the second case, it had been made some time before; and the Spider had forsaken the wound in the head, now sucked dry, to bite into some other juicy part, no matter which.

Thus shifting her fangs, a trifle this way or that, as she drains her prey, the little ogress gorges on her victim’s blood with voluptuous deliberation. I have seen the meal last for seven consecutive hours; and even then the prey was let go only because of the shock given to its devourer by my indiscreet examination. The abandoned corpse, a carcass of no value to the Spider, is not dismembered in any way. There is not a trace of bitten flesh, not a wound that shows. The Bee is drained of her blood; and that is all.

My friend Bull, when he was alive, used to catch an enemy whose teeth threatened danger by the skin of the neck. His method is in general use throughout the canine race. [134]There, in front of you, is a growling pair of jaws, open, white with foam, ready to bite. The most elementary prudence advises you to keep them quiet by catching hold of the back of the neck.

In her fight with the Bee, the Spider has not the same object. What has she to fear from her victim? The sting before all things, the terrible dart whose least stab would destroy her. And yet she does not trouble about it. What she makes for is the back of the neck, that alone and never anything else, so long as the prey remains alive. In so doing she does not aim at copying the tactics of the Dog and depriving the head, which is not particularly dangerous, of its power of movement. Her plan is farther-reaching and is revealed to us by the lightning death of the Bee. The neck is no sooner gripped than the victim expires. The cerebral centres therefore are injured, poisoned with a deadly virus; and life is straightway extinguished at its very seat. This avoids a struggle which, if prolonged, would certainly end in the aggressor’s discomfiture. The Bee has her strength and her sting on her side; the delicate Thomisus has on hers a profound knowledge of the art of murder.[135]

Let us return to the Mantis, who likewise has mastered the first principles of speedy and scientific killing, in which the little Bee-slaughtering Spider excels. A sturdy Locust is captured; sometimes a powerful Grasshopper. The Mantis naturally wants to devour the victuals in peace, without being troubled by the plunges of a victim who absolutely refuses to be devoured. A meal liable to interruptions lacks savour. Now the principal means of defence in this case are the hind-legs, those vigorous levers which can kick out so brutally and which moreover are armed with toothed saws that would rip open the Mantis’ bulky paunch if by ill-luck they happen to graze it. What shall we do to reduce them to helplessness, together with the others, which are not dangerous but troublesome all the same, with their desperate gesticulations?

Strictly speaking, it would be practicable to cut them off one by one. But that is a long process and attended with a certain risk. The Mantis has hit upon something better. She has an intimate knowledge of the anatomy of the spine. By first attacking her prize at the back of the half-opened neck and munching the cervical ganglia, she destroys [136]the muscular energy at its main seat; and inertia supervenes, not suddenly and completely, for the clumsily-constructed Locust has not the Bee’s exquisite and frail vitality, but still sufficiently, after the first mouthfuls. Soon the kicking and the gesticulating die down, all movement ceases and the game, however big it be, is consumed in perfect quiet.

Among the hunters, I have before now drawn a distinction between those who paralyse and those who kill.4 Both terrify one with their anatomical knowledge. To-day let us add to the killers the Thomisus, that expert in stabbing in the neck, and the Mantis, who, to devour a powerful prey at her ease, deprives it of movement by first gnawing its cervical ganglia.

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