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Updated: May 31, 2025
Instead of this unscrupulously omnivorous race, levying booty upon every kind of game, to its very great advantage, what do we see to-day? Each Sphex is stupidly limited to an unvarying diet; she hunts only one kind of prey, though her larva accepts them all. One will have nothing but the Ephippiger and must have a female at that; another will have nothing but the Cricket.
Save for the dispute with the Sphex, an unique event in my records as observer, I have seen all the rest many a time, but never anything more. The Black Tachytes, though the most frequent of all in my neighbourhood, remains a riddle to me. I know nothing of her dwelling, her larvae, her cocoons, her family-arrangements.
The yellow-winged Sphex, which has chosen the cricket for its victim, knows that the cricket has three nerve-centres which serve its three pairs of legs or at least it acts as if it knew this. It stings the insect first under the neck, then behind the prothorax, and then where the thorax joins the abdomen.
These habits being ascertained, Fabre proceeded to find out how the paralysis is produced. He awaited near a burrow the Sphex's arrival, dragging a victim by an antenna, and while the insect was occupied in the subterranean survey he substituted a living cricket for that which the Sphex had left, expecting to find it on the spot where it had been placed.
I will choose the larva of the Yellow-winged Sphex, which, with its convenient size, will furnish an easy object-lesson. The Hunting Wasps: chap. iv.
These Fly-eaters I propose to turn into Grasshopper-eaters; for their Bembex-diet I intend to substitute the diet of a Sphex or a Tachytes. To save myself tedious errands devoted to provisioning the refectory, I accept what good fortune offers me at the very threshold of my door.
In order to obtain the solution of this problem, Fabre during a long period accumulated experiments and observations, and at last discovered in every detail how the thing was done. In order to compel the Sphex to act in his presence, he placed himself in front of the orifice of a gallery in which the insect was working; he soon saw it returning with a paralysed cricket.
Before the burrows of Cerceris tuberculus and other devourers of the weevil, and before that of the yellow-winged Sphex, the slayer of crickets, there is plenty of distraction, owing to the busy movements of the community. The mothers have scarcely entered the nest before they are off again, returning quickly with fresh prey, only to set out once more.
The two ends of the ellipsoid have the same form, so much so that it is only thanks to an individual peculiarity, independent of the shape, that we can tell the cephalic from the anal extremity. The cephalic pole is flexible and yields to the pressure of my tweezers; the anal pole is hard and unyielding. The wrapper is double, as in the cocoons of the Sphex.
The Sphex paralyses Crickets and Grasshoppers to provide food for her grubs. Cf. "Insect Life": chapters 6 to 12. The fore-legs are paralysed; the others are capable of moving.
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