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Updated: June 23, 2025
Finally, the Ammophila, "the highest manifestation of the logic of instinct, whose profound knowledge leaves us confounded, stabs the caterpillar in nine places, because the body of the victim with which it feeds its larvae is a series of rings, set end to end, each of which possesses its little independent nervous centre."
This means a repetition of the disappointments which I had before, when, to find a caterpillar, I was obliged to watch the Ammophila while hunting and to be guided by her hints, as the truffle-hunter is guided by the scent of his Dog. A patient exploration of the harmas, one tuft of thyme after another, does not give me a single worm.
Even the paralyzers, at least some of them, are acquainted with the immense vital importance of the nerve-centres of the neck. We have seen the Hairy Ammophila munching the caterpillar's brain, the Languedocian Sphex munching the brain of the Ephippigera, with the object of inducing a passing torpor.
A slight displacement, caused by the effort of the insects' backs, is all that can possibly be effected. Ammophila and Cerceris, Sphex and Pompilus excavate their burrows wherever they please; they carry their prey on the wing, or, if too heavy, drag it afoot. The Necrophorus knows no such facilities in his task.
But, once the Ammophila has flown out of the laboratory to slake her thirst at the flowers in the neighbourhood, just to try to find her again and induce her to entrust you with her eggs, which you would rear in the refectory, to increase the taste for Spiders from generation to generation! Merely to dream of it were madness.
It forms a right angle with the supporting axis, so much so that the whole weight of the insect, which has turned itself into the arm of a lever rests upon the mandibles. The Ammophila sleeps extended in space by virtue of her mighty jaws. It takes an animal to think of a thing like that, which upsets all our preconceived ideas of repose.
No doubt the operation is not always perfect. It has recently been shown that the Ammophila sometimes kills the caterpillar instead of paralyzing it, that sometimes also it paralyzes it incompletely.
Ammophila, on the jaws of. Ammotragus tragelaphus, hairy forelegs of. Amphibia, affinity of, to the ganoid fishes; vocal organs of the. Amphibians, breeding whilst immature. Amphioxus. Amphipoda, males sexually mature while young. Amunoph III., negro character of, features of. Anal appendages of insects. Analogous variation in the plumage of birds. Anas. Anas acuta, male plumage of.
For the moment we will not dwell any longer on the method of the Hairy Ammophila; we will see instead how her kinswomen behave. The surgical method did not differ from that employed by the Hairy Ammophila when operating on her Grey Worm in one spell. All the segments, excepting the last three, were stung from front to back, beginning with the prothorax.
If every species has its law; if the Geotrupes remain faithful to filth, although experience shows that they can accommodate themselves equally well to the putrefaction of decayed leaves; if the predatory species the Cerceris, the Sphex, the Ammophila resort only to one species of quarry to nourish their larvae, although these same larvae accept all indifferently, it is on account of those superior economic laws and secret alliances the profound reasons for which as a rule escape us or are beyond the scope of our theories.
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