Motherhood and the Relationships of the Sexes

by C. Gasquoine Hartley

The welfare of the young is a matter of vital urgency; instinct dictates to the animals what reason dictates to us. Nature, as if to show her resourcefulness, her love of successful experiments, is always discovering contrary ways of attaining the same end. And what I wish to make clear is this: when, for some reason that we do not know, the family cares are neglected by the mothers, the work of tending and feeding the young is undertaken by the fathers. I shall have much more to say on this question at a later stage, and I ask you to keep it persistently in the focus of your attention. I desire to emphasise it at once. Whatever groups of animals we survey, we shall find examples of this replacement of the mother by the father, new aspects of the family, which may afford us a better grip of some problems that at present elude us.

The reality of the mother’s regard for the young is proved among many insects by the building of a nest to safeguard the family. The Anthidium, or tailor-bee, and the Chalicodoma, a species of wild bee, afford illustrations of this maternal forethought. In the former case the eggs, when laid, are placed in the ground, protected in cotton-felt satchels made by the mother from fibre which she scratches with her mandibles from the cobwebby stalks of the yellow centaury; the Chalicodoma works with cement and gravel carefully selected from some ruined building, and with such difficult material she fashions her nursery. Even more remarkable is the home of the Magachilles, or leaf-cutting bee. The mother bee, using her mandibles as scissors, cuts pieces from the leaves of the trees, wherewith she forms thimble-shaped wallets to contain the honey and eggs; the larger oval pieces which she cuts make the sides and the floor, and the round pieces the lid or door. These leaf-formed thimbles are placed in a row, one on top of the other, sometimes as many as a dozen being used. The cylinder thus formed is fitted into the deserted home of some other insect, such as the tunnels of fat earth-worms, the apartments bored in the trunks of trees by the larvæ of the Capricorn beetles, or, failing these, a reed stump or crevice in the wall is selected. But the choice of the home is always carefully made, it would seem, according to the tastes of the mothers. This structure, in part made and in part borrowed, forms the leaf-cutter’s nest.[11]

Numerous cases of home-making might be recorded, and the difficulty rests in the selection. Many spiders and the book scorpion carry their eggs in a silken bag attached to the under surface of the body. There is a case recorded that shows heroic devotion on the part of one spider mother. She was placed (in order that her behaviour might be watched) in the pit of an ant-lion. At once the enemy seized the eggs and tore them from her charge. Then the mother, though she was driven out of the pit, returned and chose to be dragged in and buried alive rather than desert her charge.[12]

A regular process of incubation is practised by the mother earwig, and the young, when hatched, keep close to her for protection. Special food for the young is prepared by many mothers, as, for instance, among the apidæ, who prepare a disgorged food in the form of a sweet milk juice. The Hymenoptera mothers, upon whom the cares of motherhood devolve in their fulness, provide board and lodging for their family. Stores of insects are caught and preserved in the nursery larder, being cunningly paralysed so that live food may be ready when needed by the children. These clever mothers, as Fabre has shown us, become masters of a host of arts for the benefit of a family which their faceted eyes will never see.

Of the domestic economy of the bees and ants whole volumes might be, and have been, written. The habits of the termites, the so-called white ants, are less widely known, although they show one of the most remarkable developments of the family that I have met. Each colony is really a patriarchal family, in which the members, all the descendants of a single pair, live in a community, and work in different ways. All the individuals are at first true males and females. Some of these develop slowly, but grow up perfect insects able to form new families. But the workers and the soldiers have to pass a period of youthful servitude in the community. These develop quickly, and grow up blind and wingless, and their reproductive organs remain in a condition of arrested development. Some of these are workers, and carry out the duties of the community; others at the same time develop jaws and heads of enormous size. It is their duty to defend the colony. And from this has come about the strange condition of their being so altered and trained for their special work that they cannot pass on to the normal life and normal duties of perfect individuals.

Among the bees and some social wasps there is a further step, and only females are selected to do household work, and modified so that they lose the ordinary personal instincts and devote themselves entirely to working for the community, while the males develop only the instincts and capacities of sex. In some species of wasps, however, the males do some work, chiefly domestic, for which they are fed by their foraging sisters. In the communities of ants, as in the termites, there are individuals modified to serve as workers and as soldiers; but here again they are all arrested females, and the males are used only for the purpose of sex. The colonies of ants last much longer than those of the bees and wasps, which are annual, and this has given the possibility of the elaboration of a very complex and extraordinary community.[13]

We are always being surprised by new experiments in family life which show the ready adaptation of habits to special circumstances. A bald statement of these facts seems to tell very little. I leave untouched a whole series of devices and wonderful behaviour—so much that I should like to record. In all these cases we see the maternal instinct in the making. But so varied and so fitting to the needed purpose are the actions of these lowly parents that much which they do gives an impression of the inexplicable—even the magical.

It is common to explain everything by the word “instinct.” But does this explanation take us very far? An elaborate instinctive capacity is probably the result of adding on one contrivance after another to a simpler common habit. And this is surely the same as saying that these little creatures have the power of learning through experience. A beginning of the instinct of caring for the young is exhibited when the mother insect chooses a favourable food position wherein to lay the eggs. Nor is it difficult to imagine how this maternal forethought may have grown out of an earlier habit, for it is but a step, though a great one, from collecting food for self—an instinct that may be traced back and back—to the habit of providing and collecting food for others. Then, this instinct of caring for the future being strongly fixed, it, in some cases and under certain favourable conditions, leads on and on to the specialised maternity and climax of parental sacrifice and devotion, such as may be illustrated by the admirable scarabees, or dung-beetles, of the Mediterranean region and elsewhere.

I have given one case of perfect parents, the Minotaurus Typhæus; but I wish to review such conduct more fully. The family qualities of the dung-beetles are so devoted and so striking, they will repay our study.

The late M. Fabre describes in his inimitable way the nursery which makes the centre and life of the scarabees’ home. These dung-workers edify us with their morals. Both sexes co-operate in making the burrows which serve as a larder for food and a nursery for the young. They are cavities dug in soft earth, usually in sand, shallow in form, about the size of one’s fist, and communicating with the outside by a short channel just large enough for the passage of the balls of dung-food. Both parents work with equal zeal to found a household. “The father is the purveyor of victuals and the person entrusted with the carrying away of rubbish. Alone, at different hours of the day he flings out of doors the earth thrown up by the mother’s excavations; alone he explores the vicinity of the home at night in quest of the pellets whereof his sons’ loaves shall be kneaded.