United States or Belarus ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The insects are a match for the birds in point of beauty, if not also in size and musical qualities. Many of them are luminescent, and omit steady or flashing lights of every tint all through the night. There are few large quadrupeds in the country, and so far as we could learn none of these are predaceous.
Indeed under favorable conditions these may keep small ponds or lakes quite free from the pests. The predaceous aquatic larvæ of many insects feed freely on wrigglers. Dragon-fly larvæ also feed freely on mosquito larvæ.
Butterflies are rare; the few are mostly Colias, Hipparchia, Polyommatus, and Melitaea; these I have seen feeding at 17,000 feet; when found higher, they have generally been carried up by currents. Of beetles, an Aphodeus, in yak-droppings, and an Elaphrus, a predaceous genus inhabiting swamps, are almost the only ones I saw.
It is interesting to note that the larvæ of some mosquitoes are themselves predaceous and feed freely on the other wrigglers that may chance to be in the same locality. Various species of fish are, however, the most important enemies of the mosquitoes. No mosquitoes can breed in a pool thus stocked with these fish.
In the dentirostres, for instance, we have in a subdued form the hooked bill and predaceous character of the raptores; to this tribe belongs the family of the shrikes, so deadly to all the lesser field birds. In the genus bos, we have, in the sub-typical group, the bison, "wild, revengeful, and shewing an innate detestation of man."
I did not observe the martin feed on them. The entomology here resembled that of Europe, more than I had expected in a tropical country, where predaceous beetles, at least Carabideae and Staphylinideae, are generally considered rare. The latter tribes swarmed under the clods, of many species but all small, and so singularly active that I could not give the time to collect many.
We observe, for example, in the Triassic, Oolitic, and Cretaceous strata, not only an absence of placental mammalia, but the presence of innumerable reptiles, some of large size, terrestrial and aquatic, herbivorous and predaceous, fitted to perform the functions now discharged by the mammalia.
His social life, his predaceous habits, the habit of killing large game, his warfare must have been a gradual acquisition, and from the beginning have been very different as regards motive and development from animal behavior which judged externally may seem to be like it in character and to have the same ends.
One of these is predaceous, brutal; the other ideal, humane. One says, "Might makes Right"; the other, "Might should serve Right."
The rest of the body may then be drifted elsewhere, and sometimes may be swallowed entire by a predaceous reptile or fish, such as an ichthyosaur or a shark."
Word Of The Day