Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 15, 2025
That it does not defend itself more skilfully when it falls into the hands of its enemy is due to ignorance of fencing, not to the weakness of the arm. And here again arises, more insistently than before, the question I asked but now: how is it that the Philanthus has learned for purposes of attack what the bee has not learned for purposes of defence.
To this difficulty I see only one reply: the one knows without having learned and the other does not know, being incapable of learning. Let us now examine the motives which induce the Philanthus to kill its bee instead of paralysing it.
It may be that the position is perilous for Philanthus. The posture of attack and self-protection is abandoned, and the ventral area, more vulnerable than the back, is exposed to the sting of the bee.
Undeceived by the facts, I hasten to apologise and express my esteem for the Philanthus. In emptying the stomach of the bee the mother is performing the most praiseworthy of all duties; she is guarding her family against poison. If she sometimes kills on her own account and abandons the body after exhausting it of honey, I dare not call her action a crime.
Then how does the Philanthus, in her long contact with the butchered Bee, manage to protect herself against that lancet, which is bent upon avenging the murder? Is there any chance of a commutation of the death-penalty? Can an accident ever happen in the Bee's favour? Perhaps. One incident strengthens my faith in this perhaps.
The Philanthus, a less scrupulous pirate, pounces on the Bee, stabs her to death and makes her disgorge in order to feed upon her honey. I say feed and I do not withdraw the word. To support my statement I have better reasons than those set forth above.
The lower animals have preceded us on the way of progress. The ancestors of the Philanthus, in the remote ages of the lacustrian tertiary formations, lived by capturing prey in both phases both as larvæ and as adults; they hunted for their own benefit as well as for the family.
They seek neither to struggle nor to escape nor to evade the inevitable; one might say that by a kind of renunciation they offer themselves up whole as a sacrifice! What irresistible destiny impels the bee to meet half-way the Philanthus, its terrible enemy!
The tension is relaxed, the muscles become slack, the resistance of the stomach ceases and the bag of honey is emptied by the robber's vigorous pressure. You see, therefore, that the Philanthus is expressly obliged to inflict a sudden death, which will do away at once with the elasticity of the organs. Where is the lightning stroke to be delivered?
What do these four huntresses and the others of similar habits do with their victims whose crops are more or less swollen with honey? They must follow the example of the Bee-eating Philanthus and make them disgorge, lest their family perish of a honeyed diet; they must manipulate the dead Bee, squeeze her and drain her dry. Everything goes to show it.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking