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Updated: June 8, 2025
The heads, abdomens and thoraxes, emptied of their fleshy substance and reduced to the tough outer skin, are easily counted. If the larva has chewed these overmuch, the wings at least are left; these are sapless organs which the Philanthus absolutely scorns.
The legs of an insect, for instance, are small tubes with the muscles inside. The limbs of vertebrate animals, on the other hand, have the muscle outside the bone. Invertebrates commonly have the main nerve trunk in front, or underneath, instead of at the back, and likewise often have their brains in their abdomens. Some of them, such as the grasshopper, even hear with their abdomens.
Australians, Bushmen, and others of the lowest savages who live on roots and berries, varied by larvae of insects and the like meagre fare, are comparatively puny in stature, have large abdomens, soft and undeveloped muscles, and are quite unable to cope with Europeans, either in a struggle or in prolonged exertion.
It is a pitiful sight to see these evicted ones dragging their bare abdomens and their frail respiratory threads over the bristling sticks. There is no great harm done, however; and I empty the whole lot into the glass pond. Not one resumes possession of an unoccupied sheath. Perhaps it would take them too long to find one of the exact size.
Their gently curving abdomens seemed to assume a separate existence, moving like restless animals over their bodies which they held in sacerdotal rigidity, contracting in circular waves, forming a whirlpool of voluptuous undulations, of which the umbilicus was the rosy centre. They accompanied the dance with incessant snapping of fingers.
Before the portrait, across almost the entire breadth of the hall, stretched the table covered with green cloth. To the right of the wall, behind the grill, stood two wooden benches; to the left two rows of crimson armchairs. Attendants with green collars and yellow buttons on their abdomens ran noiselessly about the hall.
In certain Mexican and Australian ants some of the neuters have huge spherical abdomens, which serve as living reservoirs of honey for the use of the community.
Along one wall of the place, hanging head down and fastened there for life, was a row of worker termites whose function was obviously that of reservoirs: their abdomens, so enormously distended as to be nearly transparent, glistened in varying colors to indicate that they contained various liquids whose purpose could only be guessed at.
The sun was pouring down with fervid intensity. The yard was very still and quiet. Everything that had leisure was resting drowsily in the trifling shade obtainable. The swine had ceased to make themselves heard and were sleeping upon each other's abdomens.
Clinging to the top of their nest, with their round, transparent abdomens hanging down loosely, mere globules of skin enclosing the pale amber-coloured honey, these Daniel Lamberts of the insect race look for all the world like clusters of the little American Delaware grapes, with an ant's legs and head stuck awkwardly on to the end instead of a stalk.
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