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Updated: June 29, 2025
In their galleries they follow the chimney-sweep's methods quite as cleverly as the Cetonia-grub; to move forward they make valiant use of their backs without yet having come to ambling with their bellies in the air. Can they have neglected to accommodate themselves to the demands of their environment?
What ought the powerful Cetonia-grub to do to defy the Two-banded Scolia, who is far less vigorous than her victim? It should imitate the Anoxia-larva and remain rolled up like a Hedgehog until the enemy retires. It tries to escape, unrolls itself and is lost. The other does not stir from its posture of defence and resists successfully. Is this due to acquired caution?
Before deciding this serious matter, I will ask you to reflect that the first Wasp, of whatever kind, that thought of feeding her progeny on a Cetonia-grub or on any other large piece of game demanding long preservation could necessarily have left no descendants unless the art of consuming food without causing putrescence had been practised, with all its scrupulous caution, from the first generation onwards.
This is so in particular with the Grey Worm, the sacrificial victim of the Hairy Ammophila. The Wasp is acquainted with this anatomical secret: she stabs the caterpillar again and again, from end to end, segment by segment, ganglion by ganglion. With such an organization the Cetonia-grub, unconquerably coiled upon itself would defy the paralyser's surgical skill.
In order that it may be consumed with the delicate anatomical discretion imposed by the necessity of having fresh food to the last, the Cetonia-grub must be plunged into a state of absolute immobility: any twitchings on its part as the experiments which I have undertaken go to prove would discourage our nibbling larva and impede the work of carving, which has to be effected with so much circumspection.
The slippery surface only half paralyses this strange method of locomotion. We will now place side by side with the Cetonia-grub the larva of the Morning Anoxia, the prey of the Interrupted Scolia. It is very like the larva of the Common Cockchafer.
Moreover, the Cetonia-grub, perceiving that the enemy is approaching, assumes its defensive posture, rolls itself up and makes a shield for its only vulnerable part, the ventral surface, with its convex back. No, it cannot be an easy operation to subdue the powerful larva in its underground retreat and to stab with the precision which immediate paralysis requires.
The Cetonia-grub, a regular lump of bacon, nourished by its own fat during the winter season, fulfils the needful conditions to perfection. What will become of it, lying belly upwards on its bed of leaf-mould? Will it survive the winter? At the end of a month, three of my grubs turn brown and lapse into rottenness.
This is how the deed must be done: the results prove it emphatically. But then the Cetonia-grub must possess a very exceptional structure in its nervous organization.
We will accept the Scolia as the pioneer, the foundress of the first principles of the art. The simplicity of her method justifies our supposition. She learns her trade in some way or other, by accident; she knows supremely well how to paralyse her Cetonia-grub with a single dagger-thrust driven into the thorax.
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