THE BURYING-BEETLES: EXPERIMENTS

The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles by Jean-Henri Fabre, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here. THE BURYING-BEETLES: EXPERIMENTS

CHAPTER XII. THE BURYING-BEETLES: EXPERIMENTS

Let us come to the feats of reason which have earned for the Necrophorus the best part of his fame and, to begin with, submit the case related by Clairville, that of the too hard soil and the call for assistance, to the test of experiment.

With this object I pave the centre of the space beneath the cover, flush with the soil, with a brick, which I sprinkle with a thin layer of sand. This will be the soil that cannot be dug. All around it, for some distance and on the same level, lies the loose soil, which is easy to delve.

In order to approach the conditions of the anecdote, I must have a Mouse; with a Mole, a heavy mass, the removal would perhaps present too much difficulty. To obtain one, I place my friends and neighbours under requisition; they laugh at my whim but none the less proffer their traps. Yet, the moment a very common thing is needed, it becomes rare. Defying decency in his speech, after the manner of his ancestors' Latin, the Provençal says, but even more crudely than in my translation:

"If you look for dung, the Donkeys become constipated!"

At last I possess the Mouse of my dreams! She comes to me from that refuge, furnished with a truss of straw, in which official charity grants a day's hospitality to the pauper wandering over the face of the fertile earth, from that municipal hostel whence one inevitably issues covered with Lice. O Réaumur,1 who used to invite marchionesses to see your caterpillars change their skins, what would you have said of a future disciple conversant with such squalor as this? Perhaps it is well that we should not be ignorant of it, so that we may have compassion with that of the beast.

1 René Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur (1683-1757), the inventor of the Réaumur thermometer and author of Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire naturelle des insectes (1734-1742).—Translator's Note.

The Mouse so greatly desired is mine. I place her upon the centre of the brick. The grave-diggers under the wire cover are now seven in number, including three females. All have gone to earth; some are inactive, close to the surface; the rest are busy in their crypts. The presence of the fresh corpse is soon perceived. About seven o'clock in the morning, three Necrophori come hurrying up, two males and a female. They slip under the Mouse, who moves in jerks, a sign of the efforts of the burying-party. An attempt is made to dig into the layer of sand which hides the brick, so that a bank of rubbish accumulates round the body.

For a couple of hours the jerks continue without results. I profit by the circumstance to learn the manner in which the work is performed. The bare brick allows me to see what the excavated soil would conceal from me. When it is necessary to move the body, the Beetle turns over; with his six claws he grips the hair of the dead animal, props himself upon his back and pushes, using his forehead and the tip of his abdomen as a lever. When he wants to dig, he resumes the normal position. So, turn and turn about, the sexton strives, now with his legs in the air, when it is a question of shifting the body or dragging it lower down; now with his feet on the ground, when it is necessary to enlarge the grave.

The point at which the Mouse lies is finally recognized as unassailable. A male appears in the open. He explores the corpse, goes round it, scratches a little at random. He goes back; and immediately the dead body rocks. Is he advising his collaborators of what he has discovered? Is he arranging the work with a view to their establishing themselves elsewhere, on propitious soil?

The facts are far from confirming this idea. When he shakes the body, the others imitate him and push, but without combining their efforts in a given direction, for, after advancing a little towards the edge of the brick, the burden goes back again, returning to the point of departure. In the absence of a concerted understanding, their efforts of leverage are wasted. Nearly three hours are occupied by oscillations which mutually annul one another. The Mouse does not cross the little sand-hill heaped about her by the rakes of the workers.

For the second time, a male appears and makes a round of exploration. A boring is effected in loose earth, close beside the brick. This is a trial excavation, to learn the nature of the soil, a narrow well, of no great depth, into which the insect plunges to half its length. The well-sinker returns to the other workers, who arch their backs, and the load progresses a finger's-breadth towards the point recognized as favourable. Have we done the trick this time? No, for after a while the Mouse recoils. There is no progress towards a solution of the difficulty.

Now two males come out in search of information, each of his own accord. Instead of stopping at the point already sounded, a point most judiciously chosen, it seemed, on account of its proximity, which would save laborious carting, they precipitately scour the whole area of the cage, trying the soil on this side and on that and ploughing superficial furrows in it. They get as far from the brick as the limits of the enclosure permit.

They dig, by preference, against the base of the cover; here they make several borings, without any reason, so far as I can see, the bed of soil being everywhere equally assailable away from the brick; the first point sounded is abandoned for a second, which is rejected in its turn. A third and fourth are tried; then another. At the sixth point the choice is made. In all these cases the excavation is by no means a grave destined to receive the Mouse, but a mere trial boring, of inconsiderable depth and of the diameter of the digger's body.

Back again to the Mouse, who suddenly shakes, swings, advances, recoils, first in one direction, then in another, until in the end the hillock of sand is crossed. Now we are free of the brick and on excellent soil. Little by little the load advances. This is no cartage by a team hauling in the open, but a jerky removal, the work of invisible levers. The body seems to shift of its own accord.

This time, after all those hesitations, the efforts are concerted; at least, the load reaches the region sounded far more rapidly than I expected. Then begins the burial, according to the usual method. It is one o'clock. It has taken the Necrophori halfway round the clock to ascertain the condition of the locality and to displace the Mouse.

In this experiment it appears, in the first place, that the males play a major part in the affairs of the household. Better-equipped, perhaps, than their mates, they make investigations when a difficulty occurs; they inspect the soil, recognize whence the check arises and choose the spot at which the grave shall be dug. In the lengthy experiment of the brick, the two males alone explored the surroundings and set to work to solve the difficulty. Trusting her assistants, the female, motionless beneath the Mouse, awaited the result of their enquiries. The tests which are to follow will confirm the merits of these valiant auxiliaries.

In the second place, the points where the Mouse lies being recognized as presenting an insurmountable resistance, there is no grave dug in advance, a little farther off, in the loose soil. All the attempts are limited, I repeat, to shallow soundings, which inform the insect of the possibility of inhumation.

It is absolute nonsense to speak of their first preparing the grave to which the body will afterwards be carted. In order to excavate the soil, our sextons have to feel the weight of their dead upon their backs. They work only when stimulated by the contact of its fur. Never, never in this world, do they venture to dig a grave unless the body to be buried already occupies the site of the cavity. This is absolutely confirmed by my two months and more of daily observations.

The rest of Clairville's anecdote bears examination no better. We are told that the Necrophorus in difficulties goes in search of assistance and returns with companions who assist him to bury the Mouse. This, in another form, is the edifying story of the Sacred Beetle whose pellet has rolled into a rut. Powerless to withdraw his booty from the abyss, the wily Dung-beetle summons three or four of his neighbours, who kindly pull out the pellet and return to their labours when the work of salvage is done.2

2 For the confutation of this theory, cf. The Sacred Beetle and Others: chap. i.—Translator's Note.

The ill-interpreted exploit of the thieving pill-roller sets me on my guard against that of the undertaker. Shall I be too particular if I ask what precautions the observer took to recognize the owner of the Mouse on his return, when he reappears, as we are told, with four assistants? What sign denotes that one of the five who was able, in so rational a manner, to call for help? Can we even be sure that the one to disappear returns and forms one of the band? There is nothing to tell us so; and this was the essential point which a sterling observer was bound not to neglect. Were they not rather five chance Necrophori who, guided by the smell, without any previous understanding, hastened to the abandoned Mouse to exploit her on their own account? I incline to this opinion, the likeliest of all in the absence of exact information.

Probability becomes certainty if we check the fact by experiment. The test with the brick already tells us something. For six hours my three specimens exhausted themselves in efforts before they succeeded in removing their booty and placing it on practicable soil. In this long and heavy job, helpful neighbours would have been most welcome. Four other Necrophori, buried here and there under a little sand, comrades and acquaintances, fellow-workers of the day before, were occupying the same cage; and not one of the busy ones thought of calling on them to assist. Despite their extreme embarrassment, the owners of the Mouse accomplished their task to the end, without the least help, though this could have been so easily requisitioned.

Being three, one might say, they deemed themselves strong enough; they needed no one else to lend them a hand. The objection does not hold good. On many occasions and under conditions even more difficult than those presented by a hard soil, I have again and again seen isolated Necrophori wearing themselves out against my artifices; yet not once did they leave their workshop to recruit helpers. Collaborators, it is true, often arrive, but they are summoned by their sense of smell, not by the first occupant. They are fortuitous helpers; they are never called in. They are received without strife but also without gratitude. They are not summoned; they are tolerated.

In the glazed shelter where I keep the cage I happened to catch one of these chance assistants in the act. Passing that way in the night and scenting dead flesh, he had entered where none of his kind had yet penetrated of his own accord. I surprised him on the dome of the cover. If the wire had not prevented him, he would have set to work incontinently, in company with the rest. Had my captives invited this one? Assuredly not. Heedless of others' efforts, he hastened up, attracted by the odour of the Mole. So it was with those whose obliging assistance is extolled. I repeat, in respect of their imaginary prowess, what I have said elsewhere of the Sacred Beetle's: it is a child's story, worthy to rank with any fairytale for the amusement of the simple.

A hard soil, necessitating the removal of the body, is not the only difficulty with which the Necrophori are acquainted. Frequently, perhaps more often than not, the ground is covered with grass, above all with couch-grass, whose tenacious rootlets form an inextricable network below the surface. To dig in the interstices is possible, but to drag the dead animal through them is another matter: the meshes of the net are too close to give it passage. Will the grave-digger find himself helpless against such an obstacle, which must be an extremely common one? That could not be.

Exposed to this or that habitual impediment in the exercise of its calling, the animal is always equipped accordingly; otherwise its profession would be impracticable. No end is attained without the necessary means and aptitudes. Besides that of the excavator, the Necrophorus certainly possesses another art: the art of breaking the cables, the roots, the stolons, the slender rhizomes which check the body's descent into the grave. To the work of the shovel and the pick must be added that of the shears. All this is perfectly logical and may be clearly foreseen. Nevertheless, let us call in experiment, the best of witnesses.

I borrow from the kitchen-range an iron trivet whose legs will supply a solid foundation for the engine which I am devising. This is a coarse network made of strips of raffia, a fairly accurate imitation of that of the couch-grass. The very irregular meshes are nowhere wide enough to admit of the passage of the creature to be buried, which this time is a Mole. The machine is planted by its three feet in the soil of the cage, level with the surface. A little sand conceals the ropes. The Mole is placed in the centre; and my bands of sextons are let loose upon the body.

The burial is performed without a hitch in the course of an afternoon. The raffia hammock, almost the equivalent of the natural network of the couch-grass, scarcely disturbs the burying-process. Matters do not proceed quite so quickly; and that is all. No attempt is made to shift the Mole, who sinks into the ground where he lies. When the operation is finished, I remove the trivet. The network is broken at the spot where the corpse was lying. A few strips have been gnawed through; a small number, only as many as were strictly necessary to permit the passage of the body.

Well done, my undertakers! I expected no less of your skill and tact. You foiled the experimenter's wiles by employing the resources which you use against natural obstacles. With mandibles for shears, you patiently cut my strings as you would have gnawed the threads of the grass-roots. This is meritorious, if not deserving of exceptional glorification. The shallowest of the insects that work in earth would have done as much if subjected to similar conditions.

Let us ascend a stage in the series of difficulties. The Mole is now fixed by a strap of raffia fore and aft to a light horizontal cross-bar resting on two firmly-planted forks. It is like a joint of venison on the spit, eccentrically fastened. The dead animal touches the ground throughout the length of its body.

The Necrophori disappear under the corpse and, feeling the contact of its fur, begin to dig. The grave grows deeper and an empty space appears; but the coveted object does not descend, retained as it is by the cross-bar which the two forks keep in place. The digging slackens, the hesitations become prolonged.

However, one of the grave-diggers climbs to the surface, wanders over the Mole, inspects him and ends by perceiving the strap at the back. He gnaws and ravels it tenaciously. I hear the click of the shears that completes the rupture. Crack! The thing is done. Dragged down by his own weight, the Mole sinks into the grave, but slantwise, with his head still outside, kept in place by the second strap.

The Beetles proceed with the burial of the hinder part of the Mole; they twitch and jerk it now in this direction, now in that. Nothing comes of it; the thing refuses to give. A fresh sortie is made by one of them, to find out what is happening overhead. The second strap is perceived, is severed in turn; and henceforth the work goes on as well as could be wished.

My compliments, perspicacious cable-cutters! But I must not exaggerate. The Mole's straps were for you the little cords with which you are so familiar in turfy soil. You broke them, as well as the hammock of the previous experiment, just as you sever with the blades of your shears any natural thread stretching across your catacombs. It is an indispensable trick of your trade. If you had had to learn it by experience, to think it out before practising it, your race would have disappeared, killed by the hesitations of its apprenticeship, for the spots prolific of Moles, Frogs, Lizards and other viands to your taste are usually covered with grass.

You are capable of much better things still; but, before setting forth these, let us examine the case when the ground bristles with slender brushwood, which holds the corpse at a short distance from the ground. Will the find thus hanging where it chances to fall remain unemployed? Will the Necrophori pass on, indifferent to the superb morsel which they see and smell a few inches above their heads, or will they make it drop from its gibbet?

Game does not abound to such a point that it can be despised if a few efforts will obtain it. Before I see the thing happen, I am persuaded that it will fall, that the Necrophori, often confronted with the difficulties of a body not lying on the soil, must possess the instinct to shake it to the ground. The fortuitous support of a few bits of stubble, of a few interlaced twigs, so common in the fields, cannot put them off. The drop of the suspended body, if placed too high, must certainly form part of their instinctive methods. For the rest, let us watch them at work.

I plant in the sand of the cage a meagre tuft of thyme. The shrub is at most some four inches in height. In the branches I place a Mouse, entangling the tail, the paws and the neck among the twigs to increase the difficulty. The population of the cage now consists of fourteen Necrophori and will remain the same until the close of my investigations. Of course they do not all take part simultaneously in the day's work: the majority remain underground, dozing or occupied in setting their cellars in order. Sometimes only one, often two, three or four, rarely more, busy themselves with the corpse which I offer them. To-day, two hasten to the Mouse, who is soon perceived overhead on the tuft of thyme.

They gain the top of the plant by way of the trelliswork of the cage. Here are repeated, with increased hesitation, due to the inconvenient nature of the support, the tactics employed to remove the body when the soil is unfavourable. The insect props itself against a branch, thrusting alternately with back and claws, jerking and shaking vigorously until the point whereat it is working is freed from its fetters. In one brief shift, by dint of heaving their backs, the two collaborators extricate the body from the tangle. Yet another shake; and the Mouse is down. The burial follows.

There is nothing new in this experiment: the find has been treated just as though it lay on soil unsuitable for burial. The fall is the result of an attempt to transport the load.

The time has come to set up the Frog's gibbet made famous by Gleditsch. The batrachian is not indispensable; a Mole will serve as well or even better. With a ligament of raffia I fix him, by his hind-legs, to a twig which I plant vertically in the ground, inserting it to no great depth. The creature hangs plumb against the gibbet, its head and shoulders making ample contact with the soil.

The grave-diggers set to work beneath the part which lies along the ground, at the very foot of the stake; they dig a funnel into which the Mole's muzzle, head and neck sink little by little. The gibbet becomes uprooted as they descend and ends by falling, dragged over by the weight of its heavy burden. I am assisting at the spectacle of the overturned stake, one of the most astonishing feats of reason with which the insect has ever been credited.

This, for one who is considering the problem of instinct, is an exciting moment. But let us beware of forming conclusions just yet; we might be in too great a hurry. Let us first ask ourselves whether the fall of the stake was intentional or accidental. Did the Necrophori lay it bare with the express purpose of making it fall? Or did they, on the contrary, dig at its base solely in order to bury that part of the Mole which lay on the ground? That is the question, which, for the rest, is very easy to answer.

The experiment is repeated; but this time the gibbet is slanting and the Mole, hanging in a vertical position, touches the ground at a couple of inches from the base of the apparatus. Under these conditions, absolutely no attempt is made to overthrow it. Not the least scrape of a claw is delivered at the foot of the gibbet. The entire work of excavation is performed at a distance, under the body, whose shoulders are lying on the ground. Here and here only a hole is dug to receive the front of the body, the part accessible to the sextons.

A difference of an inch in the position of the suspended animal destroys the famous legend. Even so, many a time, the most elementary sieve, handled with a little logic, is enough to winnow a confused mass of statements and to release the good grain of truth.

Yet another shake of this sieve. The gibbet is slanting or perpendicular, no matter which; but the Mole, fixed by his hind-legs to the top of the twig, does not touch the soil; he hangs a few fingers'-breadths from the ground, out of the sextons' reach.

What will they do now? Will they scrape at the foot of the gibbet in order to overturn it? By no means; and the ingenuous observer who looked for such tactics would be greatly disappointed. No attention is paid to the base of the support. It is not vouchsafed even a stroke of the rake. Nothing is done to overturn it, nothing, absolutely nothing! It is by other methods that the Burying-beetles obtain the Mole.

These decisive experiments, repeated under many different forms, prove that never, never in this world, do the Necrophori dig, or even give a superficial scrape, at the foot of the gallows, unless the hanging body touch the ground at that point. And, in the latter case, if the twig should happen to fall, this is in no way an intentional result, but a mere fortuitous effect of the burial already commenced.

What, then, did the man with the Frog, of whom Gleditsch tells us, really see? If his stick was overturned, the body placed to dry beyond the assaults of the Necrophori must certainly have touched the soil: a strange precaution against robbers and damp! We may well attribute more foresight to the preparer of dried Frogs and allow him to hang his animal a few inches off the ground. In that case, as all my experiments emphatically declare, the fall of the stake undermined by the sextons is a pure matter of imagination.

Yet another of the fine arguments in favour of the reasoning-power of insects flies from the light of investigation and founders in the slough of error! I wonder at your simple faith, O masters who take seriously the statements of chance-met observers, richer in imagination than in veracity; I wonder at your credulous zeal, when, without criticism, you build up your theories on such absurdities!

Let us continue. The stake is henceforth planted perpendicularly, but the body hanging on it does not reach the base: a condition enough to ensure that there will never be any digging at this point. I make use of a Mouse, who, by reason of her light weight, will lend herself better to the insect's manoeuvres. The dead animal is fixed by the hind-legs to the top of the apparatus with a raffia strap. It hangs plumb, touching the stick.

Soon two Necrophori have discovered the morsel. They climb the greased pole; they explore the prize, poking their foreheads into its fur. It is recognized as an excellent find. To work, therefore. Here we have again, but under more difficult conditions, the tactics employed when it was necessary to displace the unfavourably situated body: the two collaborators slip between the Mouse and the stake and, taking a grip of the twig and exerting a leverage with their backs, they jerk and shake the corpse, which sways, twirls about, swings away from the stake and swings back again. All the morning is passed in vain attempts, interrupted by explorations on the animal's body.

In the afternoon, the cause of the check is at last recognized; not very clearly, for the two obstinate gallow-robbers first attack the Mouse's hind-legs, a little way below the strap. They strip them bare, flay them and cut away the flesh about the foot. They have reached the bone, when one of them finds the string of raffia beneath his mandibles. This, to him, is a familiar thing, representing the grass-thread so frequent in burials in turfy soil. Tenaciously the shears gnaw at the bond; the fibrous fetter is broken; and the Mouse falls, to be buried soon after.

If it stood alone, this breaking of the suspending tie would be a magnificent performance; but considered in connection with the sum of the Beetle's customary labours it loses any far-reaching significance. Before attacking the strap, which was not concealed in any way, the insect exerted itself for a whole morning in shaking the body, its usual method. In the end, finding the cord, it broke it, as it would have broken a thread of couch-grass encountered underground.

Under the conditions devised for the Beetle, the use of the shears is the indispensable complement of the use of the shovel; and the modicum of discernment at his disposal is enough to inform him when it will be well to employ the clippers. He cuts what embarrasses him, with no more exercise of reason than he displays when lowering his dead Mouse underground. So little does he grasp the relation of cause and effect that he tries to break the bone of the leg before biting the raffia which is knotted close beside him. The difficult task is attempted before the extremely easy one.

Difficult, yes, but not impossible, provided that the Mouse be young. I begin over again with a strip of iron wire, on which the insect's shears cannot get a grip, and a tender Mousekin, half the size of an adult. This time a tibia is gnawed through, sawed in two by the Beetle's mandibles, near the spring of the heel. The detached leg leaves plenty of space for the other, which readily slips from the metal band; and the little corpse falls to the ground.

But, if the bone be too hard, if the prize suspended be a Mole, an adult Mouse or a Sparrow, the wire ligament opposes an insurmountable obstacle to the attempts of the Necrophori, who, for nearly a week, work at the hanging body, partly stripping it of fur or feather and dishevelling it until it forms a lamentable object, and at last abandon it when desiccation sets in. And yet a last resource remained, one as rational as infallible: to overthrow the stake. Of course, not one dreams of doing so.

For the last time let us change our artifices. The top of the gibbet consists of a little fork, with the prongs widely opened and measuring barely two-fifths of an inch in length. With a thread of hemp, less easily attacked than a strip of raffia, I bind the hind-legs of an adult Mouse together, a little above the heels; and I slip one of the prongs in between. To bring the thing down one has only to slide it a little way upwards; it is like a young Rabbit hanging in the window of a poulterer's shop.

Five Necrophori come to inspect what I have prepared. After much futile shaking, the tibiæ are attacked. This, it seems, is the method usually employed when the corpse is caught by one of its limbs in some narrow fork of a low-growing plant. While trying to saw through the bone—a heavy job this time—one of the workers slips between the shackled legs; in this position, he feels the furry touch of the Mouse against his chine. No more is needed to arouse his propensity to thrust with his back. With a few heaves of the lever the thing is done: the Mouse rises a little, slides over the supporting peg and falls to the ground.

Is this manoeuvre really thought out? Has the insect indeed perceived, by the light of a flash of reason, that to make the morsel fall it was necessary to unhook it by sliding it along the peg? Has it actually perceived the mechanism of the hanging? I know some persons—indeed, I know many—who, in the presence of this magnificent result, would be satisfied without further investigation.

More difficult to convince, I modify the experiment before drawing a conclusion. I suspect that the Necrophorus, without in any way foreseeing the consequences of his action, heaved his back merely because he felt the animal's legs above him. With the system of suspension adopted, the push of the back, employed in all cases of difficulty, was brought to bear first upon the point of support; and the fall resulted from this happy coincidence. That point, which has to be slipped along the peg in order to unhook the object, ought really to be placed at a short distance from the Mouse, so that the Necrophori may no longer feel her directly on their backs when they push.

A wire binds together now the claws of a Sparrow, now the heels of a Mouse and is bent, three-quarters of an inch farther away, into a little ring, which slips very loosely over one of the prongs of the fork, a short, almost horizontal prong. The least push of this ring is enough to bring the hanging body to the ground; and because it stands out it lends itself excellently to the insect's methods. In short, the arrangement is the same as just now, with this difference, that the point of support is at a short distance from the animal hung up.

My trick, simple though it be, is quite successful. For a long time the body is repeatedly shaken, but in vain; the tibiæ, the hard claws refuse to yield to the patient saw. Sparrows and Mice grow dry and shrivel, unused, upon the gallows. My Necrophori, some sooner, some later, abandon the insoluble mechanical problem: to push, ever so little, the movable support and so to unhook the coveted carcase.

Curious reasoners, in faith! If, just now, they had a lucid idea of the mutual relations between the tied legs and the suspending peg; if they made the Mouse fall by a reasoned manoeuvre, whence comes it that the present artifice, no less simple than the first, is to them an insurmountable obstacle? For days and days they work on the body, examining it from head to foot, without noticing the movable support, the cause of their mishap. In vain I prolong my watch; I never see a single one of them push the support with his foot or butt it with his head.

Their defeat is not due to lack of strength. Like the Geotrupes, they are vigorous excavators. When you grasp them firmly in your hand, they slip into the interstices of the fingers and plough up your skin so as to make you quickly loose your hold. With his head, a powerful ploughshare, the Beetle might very easily push the ring off its short support. He is not able to do so, because he does not think of it; he does not think of it, because he is devoid of the faculty attributed to him, in order to support their theories, by the dangerous generosity of the evolutionists.

Divine reason, sun of the intellect, what a clumsy slap in thy august countenance, when the glorifiers of the animal degrade thee with such denseness!

Let us now examine the mental obscurity of the Necrophori under another aspect. My captives are not so satisfied with their sumptuous lodging that they do not seek to escape, especially when there is a dearth of labour, that sovran consoler of the afflicted, man or beast. Internment within the wire cover palls upon them. So, when the Mole is buried and everything in order in the cellar, they stray uneasily over the trellised dome; they clamber up, come down, go up again and take to flight, a flight which instantly becomes a fall, owing to collision with the wire grating. They pick themselves up and begin all over again. The sky is splendid; the weather is hot, calm and propitious for those in search of the Lizard crushed beside the footpath. Perhaps the effluvia of the gamy tit-bit have reached them from afar, imperceptible to any other sense than that of the grave-diggers. My Necrophori therefore would be glad to get away.

Can they? Nothing would be easier, if a glimmer of reason were to aid them. Through the trelliswork, over which they have so often strayed, they have seen, outside, the free soil, the promised land which they want to reach. A hundred times if once have they dug at the foot of the rampart. There, in vertical wells, they take up their station, drowsing whole days on end while unemployed. If I give them a fresh Mole, they emerge from their retreat by the entrance-corridor and come to hide themselves beneath the belly of the beast. The burial over, they return, one here, one there, to the confines of the enclosure and disappear underground.

Well, in two and a half months of captivity, despite long stays at the base of the trellis, at a depth of three-quarters of an inch beneath the surface, it is rare indeed for a Necrophorus to succeed in circumventing the obstacle, in prolonging his excavation beneath the barrier, in digging an elbow and bringing it out on the other side, a trifling task for these vigorous creatures. Of fourteen only one succeeds in escaping.

A chance deliverance and not premeditated; for, if the happy event had been the result of a mental combination, the other prisoners, practically his equals in powers of perception, would all, from first to last, have discovered by rational means the elbowed path leading to the outer world; and the cage would promptly be deserted. The failure of the great majority proves that the single fugitive was simply digging at random. Circumstances favoured him; and that is all. We must not put it to his credit that he succeeded where all the others failed.

We must also beware of attributing to the Necrophori a duller understanding than is usual in insect psychology. I find the ineptness of the undertaker in all the Beetles reared under the wire cover, on the bed of sand into which the rim of the dome sinks a little way. With very rare exceptions, fortuitous accidents, not one thinks of circumventing the barrier by way of the base; not one manages to get outside by means of a slanting tunnel, not even though he be a miner by profession, as are the Dung-beetles par excellence. Captives under the wire dome and anxious to escape, Sacred Beetles, Geotrupes, Copres, Gymnopleuri,3 Sisyphi,4 all see about them the free space, the joys of the open sunlight; and not one thinks of going round under the rampart, which would present no difficulty to their pickaxes.

3 Cf. The Sacred Beetle and Others: chap. vii.—Translator's Note.

4 Cf. idem: chap. xv.—Translator's Note.

Even in the higher ranks of animality, examples of similar mental obfuscation are not lacking. Audubon5 tells us how, in his days, wild Turkeys were caught in North America. In a clearing known to be frequented by these birds, a great cage was constructed with stakes driven into the ground. In the centre of the enclosure opened a short tunnel, which dipped under the palisade and returned to the surface outside the cage by a gentle slope, which was open to the sky. The central opening, wide enough to give a bird free passage, occupied only a portion of the enclosure, leaving around it, against the circle of stakes, a wide unbroken zone. A few handfuls of maize were scattered in the interior of the trap, as well as round about it, and in particular along the sloping path, which passed under a sort of bridge and led to the centre of the contrivance. In short, the Turkey-trap presented an ever-open door. The bird found it in order to enter, but did not think of looking for it in order to go out.

5 John James Audubon (1780-1851), the noted American ornithologist, of French descent, author of Birds of America (1827-1830) and Ornithological Biography (1831-1839).—Translator's Note.

According to the famous American ornithologist, the Turkeys, lured by the grains of maize, descended the insidious slope, entered the short underground passage and beheld, at the end of it, plunder and the light. A few steps farther and the gluttons emerged, one by one, from beneath the bridge. They distributed themselves about the enclosure. The maize was abundant; and the Turkeys' crops grew swollen.

When all was gathered, the band wished to retreat, but not one of the prisoners paid any attention to the central hole by which he had arrived. Gobbling uneasily, they passed again and again across the bridge whose arch was yawning beside them; they circled round against the palisade, treading a hundred times in their own footprints; they thrust their necks, with their crimson wattles, through the bars; and there, with their beaks in the open air, they fought and struggled until they were exhausted.

Remember, O inept one, what happened but a little while ago; think of the tunnel that led you hither! If that poor brain of yours contains an atom of ability, put two ideas together and remind yourself that the passage by which you entered is there and open for your escape! You will do nothing of the kind. The light, an irresistible attraction, holds you subjugated against the palisade; and the shadow of the yawning pit, which has but lately permitted you to enter and will quite as readily permit you to go out, leaves you indifferent. To recognize the use of this opening you would have to reflect a little, to recall the past; but this tiny retrospective calculation is beyond your powers. So the trapper, returning a few days later, will find a rich booty, the entire flock imprisoned!

Of poor intellectual repute, does the Turkey deserve his name for stupidity? He does not appear to be more limited than another. Audubon depicts him as endowed with certain useful ruses, in particular when he has to baffle the attacks of his nocturnal enemy, the Virginian Owl. As for his behaviour in the snare with the underground passage, any other bird, impassioned of the light, would do the same.

Under rather more difficult conditions, the Necrophorus repeats the ineptness of the Turkey. When he wishes to return to the daylight, after resting in a short burrow against the rim of the cover, the Beetle, seeing a little light filtering through the loose soil, reascends the entrance-well, incapable of telling himself that he has only to prolong the tunnel as far in the opposite direction to reach the outer world beyond the wall and gain his freedom. Here again is one in whom we shall seek in vain for any sign of reflection. Like the rest, in spite of his legendary renown, he has no guide but the unconscious promptings of instinct.

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This book is part of the public domain. Jean-Henri Fabre (2009). The Glow-Worm and Other Beetles. Urbana, Illinois: Project Gutenberg. Retrieved October https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/27868/pg27868-images.html

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