The worker termite is about the size of a house-fly, the soldier much larger, with a flat head, enormously large in proportion to the size of his body, and long, curved jaws. These, and the thorax, are of a yellowish brown colour, and have a smooth, polished appearance, whereas the abdomen is a good deal lighter, and soft-looking. Only the soldiers fight. “They stand,” says Professor Drummond, “or promenade about, as sentries, at the mouths of the tunnels. When danger threatens, in shape of true ants, the soldier termite advances to the fight. With a few sweeps of its scythe-like jaws, it clears the ground, and whilst the attacking party is carrying off its dead, the builders, unconscious of the fray, quietly continue their work.” The latter, besides building the wonderful colossal nest, feeding the king and queen, and storing the eggs, as described, bring food to the nest, and feed and attend to the young, in all their stages. Besides the king and queen that have founded the termitary, other males and females are kept and attended to in it, by the workers, and these, should anything happen to the sovereigns, are ready to reign and lay eggs in their stead.
White ants are enormously destructive, and a great pest to civilised man, wherever the two come in contact. Their food is, for the most part, vegetable, but they are ready to destroy, if not to eat, almost anything. Their habit is to bore into any solid substance, and eat out its interior, leaving it hollow, with its outer surface, represented by a thin shell, intact. Such an object may be a chair, perhaps, or a table that was once, and still continues to look, of massive build. Now, however, should it be sat upon, or laid as usual, it collapses as though made of tinder. White ants have established themselves, to some extent, in Southern Europe, even in Southern France, where they have done great mischief. The navy-yard in Rochefort was, in part, destroyed by them, and their ravages at the Prefecture of La Rochelle have been minutely described by M. de Quatrefages. They extended even to the archives. “One day it was discovered that the archives of the Department were almost totally destroyed, and that without the slightest external trace of any damage. The termites had reached the boxes in which these documents were preserved, by mining the wainscoting; and they had then leisurely set to work to devour these administrative records, carefully respecting the upper sheets and the margin of each leaf, so that a box which was only a mass of rubbish, seemed to contain a pile of papers in perfect order.” I do not know if a similar misfortune has ever occurred at any of the French schools. A sudden discovery that all the class-books were in the condition described must have caused great lamentations amongst les élèves.[8]
Like ants, the termites, or white ants, have many enemies, but all of these, save one (at least in Africa) are content to seek them after they have issued from their stronghold. Innumerable birds make prey of the males and females, during their marriage flight, fowls leap into the air to catch them, when flying low, whilst toads, frogs, lizards, and some of the smaller insect-eating mammals show their appreciation of their soft, succulent bodies, whenever they alight on the ground. But one large, strange creature there is that, specialised for their destruction, assaults them in their fortress, and lives almost wholly upon them. This is the aard vark, or earth-hog, as the Boers of South Africa call him, an uncouth, naked-looking animal about the size of a pig, with tremendous claws, great, muscular, bowed fore legs, a proboscis-like snout, and long, narrow ears like a donkey’s. This gargoyle-like creature lies hidden during the day, as though shunning, then, to reveal itself; but when semi-darkness, by giving new, weird shapes to familiar objects, has made earth more in harmony with its portentous appearance, it issues forth and proceeds, in course of time, to an inhabited termite mound. Jumping up against this—now, perhaps, in the pale moonlight—it digs its curved claws into the hard, baked crust, and bowing in its strong forearms with a mighty effort, tears a hole in the nest’s side, and lays bare its interior. The indignant and ever-valiant soldiers rush out through the ruins, prepared to grapple with any foe of any shape. But the gristly snout and thick, hard skin, though but scantily clothed with coarse hair, are impervious to all their attacks, whilst from the tubular mouth is shot forth constantly, and withdrawn again, a long, thin, worm-like object, which, licking amidst the wreck of halls and galleries, sweeps thousands back with it, in each retreat. By morning the once proud edifice may be a mere shell, from which the destroyer, filled to satiety with its whilom inhabitants, now walks slowly away, to lie asleep and digesting them, till the following evening calls him to another meal.
The part which the aard vark plays in South Africa is taken in South America by the great ant-eater, or ant-bear, a creature about the same size, or even larger, and, if possible, of still more extraordinary appearance. It is something of the same general shape, but thinner and narrower, the fore legs are even more bowed, enormously powerful, and are armed with four curved claws so extremely long that the animal has to walk on them, for they turn inwards, instead of outwards like a dog’s. The snout is like a very long tube—next to the elephant’s, perhaps, it is the most elongated of any in the animal kingdom—and out of it a tongue of corresponding length is projected, which is always moist with a glutinous liquid, emitted from two large glands situated just below its root. Its body is covered with long, coarse hair, which is especially thick on the back, and becomes longer towards the hindquarters, till on the tail, which is immense, it is like a great flowing mane. This huge tail, which is not only long, but broad, can be turned right over the animal’s back, so as to make a great umbrella, or canopy, under which it is said sometimes to walk. Whether it really walks with it held in this way, I do not know. I have not seen it do so at the Zoological Gardens; but there it is under cover, and the ant-eater is said to put its tail to the use of a real umbrella. When it sleeps, however, it, as it were, curls itself up in it, and is thus concealed, or perhaps protected from a sudden assault.
Waterton says of the ant-eater: “Without swiftness to enable him to escape from his enemies, without teeth, the possession of which would assist him in self-defence, and without the power of burrowing in the ground, by which he might conceal himself from his pursuers, he still is capable of ranging through these wilds in perfect safety, nor does he fear the fatal pressure of the serpent’s fold, or the teeth of the famished jaguar. Nature has formed his fore legs wonderfully thick and strong and muscular, and armed his feet with three tremendous, sharp and crooked claws. Whenever he seizes an animal with these formidable weapons, he hugs it close to his body and keeps it there till it dies through pressure or through want of food. Nor does the ant-bear, in the meantime, suffer much from loss of aliment, as it is a well-known fact that he can go longer without food than, perhaps, any other animal, except the land-tortoise.”[9]
Waterton also tells us that “the Indians have a great dread of coming in contact with the ant-bear; and after disabling him in the chase” (for they esteem his flesh a dainty) “never think of approaching him till he be quite dead.” It is with good reason that they are thus cautious, for were they not so, their life might pay the penalty, as the following account will show: “An Indian, living near Rorainea, was hunting in the forest to the north of that mountain, with some others, armed with his long blow-pipe. In returning home, considerably in advance of the rest of the party, it is supposed that he saw a young ant-eater, and taking it up in his arms, was carrying it home, when its mother gave chase, overtook and killed him; for when his companions came up, they found him lying dead on his face, in the embrace of the ant-bear, one of its large claws having entered his heart. In the struggle he had managed to stick his knife behind his back into the animal, which bled to death, but not before the poor fellow had succumbed to its terrible hug. It was evident that he had only heard the ant-eater coming when it was close upon him, and, in turning round to look, his blow-pipe got caught across the path in front of him, then, as he turned to run, it formed a bar to his progress, and he fell over it as the animal seized him. So firmly had the animal grappled him, that to separate it from the corpse, the Indians had to cut off its fore legs.”[10] Such a mishap as this, however, must be of extremely rare occurrence.
A very different creature to the ant-bear or the ant-hog (aard vark) is the ant-lion. In its mature state it is like a dragon-fly, to which order of insects (for it is an insect) it belongs, but whilst still in the larval or caterpillar condition it looks something like a fat spider with six, instead of eight, very feeble legs, with the last pair of which, only, it is able to move, but only slowly, and backwards instead of forwards. It is, therefore, quite unable to chase and catch an ant, and yet on ants and other equally active insects it manages to prey. To do so it employs a stratagem which has long been known and marvelled at. “Depressing,” says Wood, “the end of its abdomen, and crawling backwards in a circular direction, it traces a shallow trench, the circle varying from one to three inches in diameter. It then makes another round, starting just within the first circle, and so it proceeds, continually scooping up the sand with its head, and jerking it outside the limits of its trench. By continuing this process, and always tracing smaller and smaller circles, the grub at last completes a conical pit, and then buries itself in the sand, holding the mandibles widely extended. Should an insect, an ant, for example, happen to pass near the pitfall, it will be sure to go and look into the cavity, partly out of the insatiable curiosity which distinguishes ants, cats, monkeys, and children, and partly out of a desire to obtain food. No sooner has the ant approached the margin of the pitfall than the treacherous soil gives way, the poor insect goes tumbling and rolling down the yielding sides of the pit, and falls into the extended jaws that are waiting for it at the bottom. A smart bite kills the ant, the juices are extracted, the empty carcase is jerked out of the pit, and the ant-lion settles itself in readiness for another victim.”
CHAPTER XI
AQUATIC ARCHERY—THE ANGLER-FISH AND THE CUTTLEFISH—INSECT ARTILLERY—EELS THAT GIVE ELECTRIC SHOCKS.