Oddities of the Insect World

but a beetle, the green and purple and yellow tiger beetle, Therates labiatus. It inhabited the damp and gloomy Oddities of the glades and fed mainly on insects that visited the flowers. Its perfume, Wal- Insect World lace concluded, aided it in attracting small nectar gatherers to the spot. Edwin Way Teale At least three species of oriental praying mantids use color instead of perfume to aid them in securing their Nineteen centuries ago. when Pliny food. These insects, like the mantid na- the Elder was writing his natural his- tive to the southern part of the United tory in Rome, men believed that insects States, imprison their prey within the were creatures without blood, that but- spined traps formed by their forelegs. terfly eggs were drops of solidified dew, By having parts of their bodies ex- that echoes killed honey bees, and that panded into thin plates which are gold was mined in the mountains north brightly tinted on the under side, the of India by a giant ant "the color of a oriental insects resemble flowers on the cat and as large as an Egyptian wolf." bushes where they hunt. When climb- "This gold," Pliny assured his ing to a favorable position, the mantid rííaders, "is extracted in the winter and keeps the bright-colored under sides of is taken by the Indians during the heats the plates hidden. However, when it of summer while the ants are compelled finds itself among flowers to its liking, it by the excessive warmth to hide them- turns the colored plates uppermost and selves in their holes. Still, however, on remains motionless until a victim being aroused by catching the scent of alights close by. the Indians, they sally forth and fre- One British naturalist reports seeing quently tear them to pieces, though a mantid in India climb laboriously to provided with the swiftest camels for the tips of three branches before it the purpose of flight, so great is their found flowers in bloom. On the first fleetness, combined with their ferocity two times, when it found buds, it slowly and their passion for gold." retraced its steps and began again. Today, nobody credits Pliny's story Attaining the flowers, it took its posi- of wolf-size ants with a passion for gold tion among them and exposed the any more than they believe in his orien- under side of its pink, petallikc plates. tal locusts that grew to such size that Some oriental mantids have plates that their hind legs were dried and used for are blue, some mauve, some purple. saws. These traveler's tales, the prod- Still others have pure white plates, that uct of imagination or misunderstand- have a surface that is glistening and ing, have been long discredited. Imagi- waxy, like the petals of real flowers. nary wonders, in fact, are less needed In a number of instances, the or- in dealing with the insects than with thoptera of the Tropics are ingeniously any other group of living creatures. camouflaged by nature to escape the The truth is odd and dramatic enough. notice of their enemies. For example, In 1857, when Alfred Rüssel Wallace the long-horned grasshopper, Metapro- landed on the Kei Islands of the Malay sagoga insignis, possesses wings which Archipelago to collect natural-history not only resemble leaves but which are specimens, he soon noticed that each equipped with irregular patches that time he entered a deep damp forest look as though the leaf tissue had been glade he found the air filled with a fra- eaten away by an insect, leaving only grance that reminded him of attar of a network of veins visible. Another roses. For a long time he tried to trace tropical leaf-grasshopper has brownish the perfume to flowers. Finally he dis- wings that suggest dried leaves. The covered that its source was not a flower resemblance is heightened by the fact 8 Oddities of the Insect World that markings near their extremities Walkingstick insects, in the Tropics, give the impression that they are also present some amazingly realistic cracked or torn. Then there is a mantid instances of insect camouflage. One of of the Orient, Brancsikia aeroplana, the most remarkable bears the scien- which has curled-up brownish edges to tific name of Açhrioptera spinosissima. its wings, thus heightening their re- About half a foot in length, its green semblance to dry brown leaves. On and brown body is decorated with the wings of a katydid from Venezuela, spines that are tinted bright red like which William Beebe once showed me, thorns. The insect looks for all the imitation dewdrops and fungus spots world like a broken piece of briar mov- increased the effectiveness of the in- ing along on six legs. Another tropical sect's camouflage. walkingstick, Palophus reyi, is almost Probably the most famous camou- a foot long. The outer skin of its body flaged insect in the world is Kallima, is roughened into an amazingly close the dead-leaf butterfly of the Far East. approximation of dry bark on a dead In The Malay Archipelago, Alfred twig. Rüssel Wallace tells of his first meet- Such resemblances benefit the insect ing with this remarkable butterfly. At by making it inconspicuous amid its the time he encountered it he was col- surroundings. But what benefit those lecting in Sumatra, beating the bushes brownie bugs of the insect world, the for insects and examining his net care- Membracidae, obtain from the fantas- fully for poisonous snakes, which were tic adornments they possess is often often dislodged from the branches, difficult to see. Again, it is in the Trop- before extracting the insects he had ics that the most spectacular examples caught. are found. Nature seems to have run "When on the wing," he writes of riot, designing oddities just for the the dead-leaf butterfly, "it is very con- sake of originality. In some species of spicuous. The species is not uncommon treehoppers, the prothorax is drawn in dry woods and thickets and I often out into hornlike adornments; in oth- endeavored to catch it without success, ers, it rises in a high, curving crown; for, after flying a short distance, it in others, it forms spears or balls. Of- would enter a bush among dry or dead tentimes these are brightly colored. leaves and however carefully I crept While American treehoppers are less up to the spot where the butterfly set- extravagantly formed than those in the tled and though I lost sight of it for Tropics, some species are among our some time, I at length discovered that oddest-appearing insects. All are small, it was close before my eyes but that in and the strangeness of their forms fre- its position of repose it so closely re- quently is unappreciated without the sembled a dead leaf attached to a twig aid of a magnifying glass. as almost certainly to deceive the eye When Charles Darwin was crossing even when gazing full upon it. the Atlantic in 1832, at the start of his "A very closely allied species, Kal- famous voyage in the Beagle, the ship lima inachis, inhabits India where it dropped anchor at desolate St. Paul's is very common. No two are alike but Island, 540 miles from the coast of all the variations correspond to those South America. "Not a single plant," of dead leaves. Every tint of yellow, Darwin writes, "not even a lichen, ash, brown, and red is found here and grows on this islet ; yet it is inhabited by in many specimens there occur patches several insects and spiders." Most of and spots formed of small black dots, them were parasites on the boobies and so closely resembling the way in which other sea birds that landed on the bar- minute fungi grow on leaves that it is ren rocks and one was a small brown almost impossible at first not to believe moth belonging to a genus that feeds that fungi have grown on the butter- on feathers. flies themselves!" The bleak cluster of volcanic rocks 10 Yearbook of Agriculture 1952 that form St. Paul's Island is but one By surrounding itself with bubbles, of many strange places where insects the little froghopper produces its own are able to survive. Oceanic water climate. In spring and summer, small striders skate over the waves hundreds masses of froth often appear on grass of miles from shore. They lay their eggs stems and weeds. They are the foam on floating sea-bird feathers and other castles of the cercopids. A kind of bir bits of refuse and often live their whole cycle pump, formed of overlapping lives without ever seeing land. In Ecua- plates beneath its abdomen, which pro- dor, butterflies are found among the vide a chamber into which air is drawn crags of the Andes 16,500 feet above and expelled, permits the insect to pro- sea level, while explorers, scaling the duce bubbles in excess sap, which it has flanks of the Himalayas, have encoun- sucked from the plant. Within this tered a praying mantid almost as high. bubble mass, sheltered from the direct Snow-white and blind insects live rays of the sun and kept moist by the deep beneath the earth's surface in foam, the immature insect spends its caverns. Springtails skip across snow- early days. For millions of years, it has banks during February thaws in North- been employing its own primitive form ern States. Certain flies breed in the of air conditioning. brine of the Great Salt Lake and a One of the classic studies of the number of insects make their homes in French entomologist, J.

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