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Updated: June 23, 2025
If nevertheless the Leucopsis does not distinguish between these various cells and drives the probe into all of them indifferently, is this not an evident proof that smell is no guide whatever to her in her search? Other considerations, when I was treating of the Hairy Ammophila, enabled me to assert that the antennae have no olfactory powers.
This, it would seem, from the persistency with which the Ammophila inflicts it, is the most important prick of all. Is it unreasonable to suppose that the operator, when she begins by pricking the thorax, intends to subdue her capture and to make it incapable of injuring her, or even of disturbing her when the moment comes for the delicate and protracted surgery of the second act?
Hence inertia of the powerful hooks, which are the paralysed creature's sole means of resistance, becomes essential during the carting. The Ammophila obtains it by compressing the cerebral ganglia, by munching the neck.
Thus are my purveyors kept going; and, after all, their help would be very inadequate if I did not take upon myself the main burden of these wearisome quests. We will begin with the Hairy Ammophila, my neighbour. Year after year, when April comes, I see her in considerable numbers, very busy on the paths in my enclosure.
I succeeded in feeding the larva of the Hairy Ammophila with an adult black Cricket, who was accepted as readily as the natural game, the caterpillar.
This done, the Ammophila releases her victim and proceeds to stamp her tarsi, to polish her wings, to stretch herself. Again I observe the acrobatic postures, the forehead touching the ground, the hinder part of the body raised. This mimic triumph is the same as that of the huntress of the Grey Worm. Then the Looper is once more seized.
Though engaged in individual tasks, the first seeks the society of her kind, as do certain of the Sphex-wasps, while the second establishes herself in solitude, after the fashion of the Ammophila. Neither the personal form nor the nature of the occupation determines sociability.
It will be seen how valuable is the evidence of Jules' Ammophila: it tells us that the immolaters of Looper caterpillars and those of ordinary caterpillars follow precisely the same method; that victims displaying very dissimilar external structure do not entail any modification of the operative tactics so long as the internal organization remains the same.
One cannot even object that the strokes of the sting are inevitably directed to these points because the chitinous envelope of the victim offers too much resistance in other spots for the dart to penetrate, because here is the Ammophila, a near relative of the Sphex, which chooses for its prey a caterpillar.
I once took from between the legs of a Hairy Ammophila, which had just paralysed it, a caterpillar of Dicranura vinula. What a strange capture compared with the ordinary caterpillar!
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