“A singular creature and not exactly ingratiating in appearance. It would not be very pleasant to encounter one in a lonely nook in the woods, little adapted though its size is for attacking us. Look at its ferocious pointed nippers, opening and closing like a pair of tweezers. Do they not betoken a thirst for blood? As a matter of fact, the little creature lives by carnage exclusively; it is a hunter whose game is the ant. Hence its name of ant-lion, or, as it might be put, the lion of the ants.
Ant-lion
“Prey of that sort is incapable of serious resistance when once it has been seized by those terrible [[266]]hooks; but it must first be seized, and there is the difficulty. The nimble ant scampers off at the first approach of danger, and if it should chance to be hard pressed it has only to run up a blade of grass and there be out of reach. The ant-lion, on its part, heavy of paunch and short of leg, drags itself along very awkwardly; and, moreover, if it ever undertakes to get over the ground—a rare occurrence—it always moves backward, which is not what might be called a speedy gait and does not adapt itself to keeping the object of one’s pursuit always in sight.
“The chase being thus rendered impracticable, there remain the snare and the ambuscade. The creature must capture by cunning what its sluggishness of movement makes it impossible to get possession of otherwise. Let us see what form this cunning takes.
“Hunt at the base of sun-exposed walls and rocks, and if you find there some little nook with very fine and dry sandy soil, the ant-lion will seldom fail to be there too. Its abode is easily recognized by the regular funnel-shaped hollow scooped in the ground. The insect itself is invisible, being hidden under the sand at the bottom of the excavation.
“With the blade of a knife thrust obliquely into the ground lift up the bottom of the funnel, and you will have the little creature, rather abashed at first by the sudden destruction of its retreat, but soon recovered and striving to hide itself in the soil by a backward movement. Make haste to take it and put it into a glass under a layer of fine sand like that [[267]]beneath which you found it. There at your leisure you can watch it as it hollows out its funnel, a pitfall for catching ants. You will see it put into practice the cunning wiles of an ambushed hunter.
“Let us for a moment stand as onlookers, mentally at least, while this work goes forward. Placed on a bed of sand and restored from its former dismay, the ant-lion proceeds to plunge its belly halfway into the soil; then, with this substitute for a plowshare, and always moving backward, it draws a circular furrow. Returning to its starting-point it draws a second furrow close to the first, then a third next to the second, and so on with a great many more, each one of smaller circumference than the preceding, so that they all together form a spiral which constantly approaches the center; and as this living plow is driven deeper and deeper at each circuit, and throws outward the soil that it turns up, the final result is a funnel of about two inches in diameter and somewhat less in depth. There you have the ant-lion’s trap, the treacherous pitfall in which the ants are caught.
“Of course the huntsman employing such a device as this must himself keep well out of sight. The ant-lion is too well versed in its art to violate this elementary principle. It crouches down under the sand at the lowest point of the upturned funnel, with only its nippers showing, and these are pressed close to the ground, but wide open and ready to seize any luckless ant that may chance to tumble down the incline. Although the horrible pincers are exposed, [[268]]they are not likely to excite suspicion, being easily mistakable from the edge of the excavation for some stray bits of dead leaves.
“These preparations completed, the insect lies in wait, perfectly motionless. Its patience and its hunger are subjected to prolonged trial. Hours and even days pass with no sign of game. Alas, how difficult it is in this world even for an ant-lion to win its mouthful of bread!