Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 2, 2025
Day by day the young Scolia's head penetrates farther into the Cetonia's belly. To pass through the narrow orifice made in the skin, the fore-part of the body contracts and lengthens out, as though drawn through a die-plate. The larva thus assumes a rather strange form.
At the first closing of this ruthless vice, at the first contraction, it would be crushed, or at least detached from its place; and any egg removed from the point where the mother has fastened it is bound to perish. It needs, on the Cetonia's abdomen, a yielding support which the bites of the new-born larva will not set aquiver.
Environment, diet, industry and internal structure are all similar; and yet one of these three larvae, the Cetonia's, reveals a most singular dissimilarity from its fellow-trenchermen: alone among the Scarabaeidae and, more than that, alone in all the immense order of insects, it walks upon its back.
By no means: the Cetonia's skin is no tougher on the back than on the belly; moreover, the grub is capable of perforating the skin when it leaves the egg; a fortiori, it must be more capable of doing so now that it has attained a sturdy growth. Thus we see no lack of ability, but an obstinate refusal to nibble at a point which ought to be respected. Who knows?
The Interrupted Scolia experiences the same hunting and surgical difficulties when she attacks, in the crumbling, sandy soil, the larvae of the Shaggy Anoxia or of the Morning Anoxia, according to the district; and these difficulties, if they are to be overcome, demand in the victim a concentrated nervous system, like the Cetonia's.
Now what would become of the egg and the new-born grub of the Scoliae, fixed under the belly, at the centre of the Cetonia's spiral, or inside the hook of the Oryctes or the Anoxia? They would be crushed between the jaws of the living vice. It is essential that the arc should slacken and the hook unbend, without the least possibility of their returning to a state of tension.
If this takes too long for my patience, I can myself guide its head to the place with the point of a paint-brush. The grub then recognizes the hole of its own making, slips its neck into it and little by little dives into the Cetonia's belly, so that the original state of affairs appears to be exactly restored. And yet its successful rearing is henceforth highly problematical.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking