第61章 THE BEE-EATING PHILANTHUS(5)
She does not paralyse her capture according to the rites customary among the Hunting Wasps; she kills it. Why kill it? If the eyes of our understanding be not closed, the need for sudden death is clear as daylight. The Philanthus proposes to obtain the honeyed broth without ripping up the Bee, a proceeding which would damage the game when it is hunted on behalf of the larvae, without resorting to the murderous extirpation of the crop. She must, by able handling, by skilful pressure, make the Bee disgorge, she must milk her, in a manner of speaking. Suppose the Bee stung behind the corselet and paralysed. That deprives her of her power of locomotion, but not of her vitality. The digestive organs in particular retain or very nearly retain their normal energy, as is proved by the frequent excretions that take place in the paralysed prey, so long as the intestine is not empty, as is proved above all by the victims of the Languedocian Sphex (Cf. "The Hunting Wasp": chapters 8 to 10.--Translator's Note.), those helpless creatures which I used to keep alive for forty days on end with a soup consisting of sugar and water. It is absurd to hope, without therapeutic means, without a special emetic, to coax a sound stomach into emptying its contents. The stomach of the Bee, who is jealous of her treasure, would lend itself to the process even less readily than another. When paralysed, the insect is inert; but there are always internal energies and organic forces which will not yield to the manipulator's pressure. The Philanthus will nibble at the throat and squeeze the sides in vain: the honey will not rise to the mouth so long as a vestige of life keeps the crop closed.
Things are different with a corpse. The tension is relaxed, the muscles become slack, the resistance of the stomach ceases and the bag of honey is emptied by the robber's vigorous pressure. You see, therefore, that the Philanthus is expressly obliged to inflict a sudden death, which will do away at once with the elasticity of the organs. Where is the lightning stroke to be delivered? The slayer knows better than we do, when she sticks the Bee under the chin. The cerebral ganglia are reached through the little hole in the neck and death ensues immediately.
The relation of these acts of brigandage cannot satisfy my distressing habit of following each reply obtained with a fresh question, until the granite wall of the unknowable rises before me. If the Philanthus is an expert in killing Bees and emptying crops swollen with honey, this cannot be merely an alimentary resource, especially when, in common with the others, she has the banqueting-hall of the flowers. I cannot accept her atrocious talent as inspired merely by the craving for a feast obtained at the expense of an empty stomach. Something certainly escapes us: the why and wherefore of that crop drained dry. A creditable motive may lie hidden behind the horrors which I have related. What is it?
Any one can understand the vagueness of the observer's mind when he first asks himself this question. The reader is entitled to be treated with consideration. I will spare him the recital of my suspicions, my gropings and my failures and will come straight to the results of my long investigation. Everything has its harmonious reason for existence. I am too fully persuaded of this to believe that the Philanthus pursues her habit of profaning corpses solely to satisfy her greed. What does the emptied crop portend? May it not be that..? Why, yes...After all, who knows?...Let us try along these lines.
The mother's first care is the welfare of the family. So far, we have seen the Philanthus hunting only for her stomach's sake; let us watch her hunting as a mother. Nothing is easier than to distinguish the two performances. When the Wasp wants a few good mouthfuls and nothing more, she scornfully abandons the Bee after picking her crop. The Bee is to her a worthless remnant, which will shrivel where it lies and be dissected by the Ants. If, on the other hand, she wants to stow away the Bee as a provision for her larvae, she clasps her in her two intermediate legs and, walking on the other four, goes round and round the edge of the bell-glass, seeking for an outlet through which to fly off with her prey. When she recognizes the circular track as impossible, she climbs up the sides, this time holding the Bee by the antennae with her mandibles and clinging to the polished and perpendicular surface with her six feet. She reaches the top of the glass, stays for a little while in the hollow of the knob at the top, returns to the ground, resumes her circling and her climbing and does not decide to relinquish her Bee until she has stubbornly attempted every means of escape. This persistence on her part to retain her hold on the cumbrous burden tells us pretty plainly that the game would go straight to the cells if the Philanthus had her liberty.
Well, these Bees intended for the larvae are stung under the chin like the others; they are real corpses; they are manipulated, squeezed, drained of their honey exactly as the others are. In all these respects, there is no difference between the hunt conducted to provide food for the larvae and the hunt conducted merely to gratify the mother's appetite.
As the worries of captivity might well be the cause of a few anomalies in the insect's actions, I felt that I ought to enquire how things happen in the open. I lay in wait near some colonies of Philanthi, for longer perhaps than the question deserved, as it had already been settled by what had happened under glass. My tedious watches were rewarded from time to time.
Most of the huntresses returned home immediately, with the Bee under their abdomen; some halted on the brambles hard by; and here I saw them squeezing the dead Bee and making her disgorge the honey, which was greedily lapped up. After these preliminaries the corpse was stored. Every doubt is therefore removed: the provisions of the larva are first carefully drained of their honey.