When the mating is over, a female meeting a male in the open must then treat him as fair game and munch him up in order to close the matrimonial rites. I have turned over many stones but have never chanced upon this spectacle; no matter: what I saw in the cage is enough to convince me. What a world the Gold Beetle lives in, where the matron devours her partner when she no longer needs him to fertilize her ovaries! And how lightly do the laws of creation hold the males, to allow them to be butchered in this way! [[313]]
Are these fits of cannibalism following upon love widely distributed? For the moment I know only three really characteristic examples: those of the Praying Mantis, the Languedocian Scorpion and the Golden Carabus. The horror of the lover converted into prey is also found in the Locustian tribe, though accompanied by less brutality, for the victim devoured is now a dead and not a living insect. The female of the White-faced Decticus[3] is quite willing to nibble a leg of the defunct male. The Green Grasshopper[4] behaves likewise.
To a certain degree the nature of the diet acts as an excuse: Dectici and Grasshoppers are first and foremost carnivores. Coming upon a corpse of their own species, the matrons consume it more or less thoroughly, even if it be that of last night’s lover. Considered as game, one is as good as another.
But what shall we say of the vegetarians? As the laying-season approaches, the Ephippiger turns upon her companion, still full of life, and bites him, makes a hole in his belly and eats as much of him as her appetite allows. [[314]]The easy-going Cricket suddenly develops a shrewish character: she beats the mate who lately wooed her in such impassioned serenades; she rends his wings, breaks his fiddle and even goes so far as to tear a few mouthfuls from the musician.[5] So it seems probable that this mortal aversion of the female for the male after the pairing is fairly common, especially among the carnivorous insects. What is the reason of these atrocious habits? If circumstances favour me, I shall not fail to investigate it.
Of the whole colony in the cage I have five females left at the beginning of August. Their conduct has changed greatly since the eating of the males. Food has become indifferent to them. They no longer run up to the Snail, whom I serve half-stripped of his shell; they scorn the plump Mantis and the Caterpillar, their erstwhile delights; they doze under the shelter of the board and rarely show themselves. Can this mean preparation for the laying? I enquire into this day by day, being most anxious to see the first appearance of the little larvæ, an artless first appearance, deprived of all solicitude, [[315]]as I foresee from the lack of industry in the mother.
I wait in vain: there is no laying. Meanwhile the cool nights of October arrive. Four females perish, this time by a natural death.
The survivor takes no notice of them. She refuses them burial in her stomach, a burial at one time accorded to the males, dissected alive. She cowers as deep down in the ground as the scanty earth of the cage permits. In November, when Mont Ventoux is white with the first snows, she grows torpid in her hiding-place. Let us henceforth leave her in peace. She will live through the winter, everything seems to tell us, and produce her eggs next spring. [[317]]
[1] The seven essays on the Languedocian Scorpion will appear in the final volume of the series, entitled The Life of the Scorpion.—Translator’s Note. [↑]
[2] Cf. The Life of the Grasshopper: chaps. vi. to ix. and, in particular, chap. vii.—Translator’s Note. [↑]