Chapter x
THE SPANISH COPRIS: THE HABITS OF THE MOTHER
There are two special points to be remembered in the life-history of the Spanish Copris: the rearing of her family; and her pill-rolling talents.
First, the output of her ovaries is extremely limited; and nevertheless her race thrives just as much as that of many others whose seed is numerous. Maternal care makes up for the small number of her eggs. Prolific layers, after making a few rough and ready arrangements, abandon their progeny to luck, which often sacrifices a thousand in order to preserve one; they are factories turning out organic matter for life’s comprehensive maw. Almost as soon as hatched, or even before hatching, their offspring for the most part perish devoured. Extermination makes short work of superfluity in the interests of the community at large. That which was destined to live lives, but under another form. These excessive breeders know and can know nothing of maternal affection.
The Copres have other and fundamentally different habits. Three or four eggs represent their entire posterity. How are they to be preserved, to a great extent, from the accidents that await them? For them, so few in numbers, as for the others, whose name is legion, existence is an inexorable struggle. The mother knows it and, in order to save her nearest and dearest, sacrifices herself, giving up [[150]]outdoor pleasures, nocturnal flights and that supreme delight of her race, the investigation of a fresh heap of dung. Hidden underground, by the side of her brood, she never leaves her nursery. She keeps watch; she brushes off the parasitic growths; she closes up the cracks; she drives off any ravagers that may appear: Acari,[1] tiny Staphylini,[2] grubs of small Flies, Aphodii,[3] Onthophagi.[4] In September she climbs to the surface with her family, which, having no further use for her, emancipates itself and henceforth lives as it pleases. No bird could be a more devoted mother.
Secondly, the Copris’ abrupt transformation at laying-time into an expert pill-maker provides us, in so far as we are able to get at the truth, with a proof of the theorem which I was almost afraid to formulate just now. Here is a Beetle not equipped for the pill-roller’s art, an art moreover which is not required for her individual prosperity. She has no aptitude, no propensity for kneading the food which she buries and consumes as she finds it; she is totally ignorant of the sphere and its properties in connection with food-preservation; and, all of a sudden, in obedience to an inspiration for which nothing, in the ordinary course of her life, has prepared the way, she moulds into a sphere or ovoid the legacy which she bequeaths to her grub. With her short, clumsy fore-leg she shapes the viaticum of her offspring into a skilful solid mass. The difficulty is great. It is overcome by dint of application and patience. In two days, or three at most, the round cradle is perfected. How does the dumpy creature [[151]]go to work to achieve mathematical exactness in her ball? The Sacred Beetle has her long legs, which serve as compasses; the Gymnopleurus has similar tools. But the Copris, unprovided with the spread of limb which would enable her to encircle the object, finds nothing in her equipment that favours the formation of a sphere. Perched upon her ovoid, she labours at it bit by bit with an intensity that makes up for her defective implements; she estimates the correctness of its curve by assiduous tactile examinations from one end to the other. Perseverance triumphs over clumsiness and achieves what at first seemed impossible.
Here all my readers will assail me with the same questions: why this abrupt change in the insect’s habits? Why this indefatigable patience in a form of work that bears no relation to the tools at hand? And what is the use of this ovoid shape whose perfection demands so great an outlay of time?
To these queries I see only one possible reply: the preservation of the foodstuffs in a fresh condition demands the globular form. Remember this: the Copris builds her nest in June; her larva develops during the dog-days; it lies a few inches below the surface of the ground. In the cavern, which is now a furnace, the provisions would soon become uneatable, if the mother did not give them the shape least susceptible to evaporation. Very different from the Sacred Beetle in habits and structure but exposed to the same dangers in her larval state, the Copris, in order to ward off the peril, adopts the principles of the great pill-roller, principles whose surpassing wisdom we have already made manifest.
I would ask the philosophers to ponder upon these five manufacturers of preserved meats and the numerous rivals [[152]]which they doubtless possess in other climes. I submit to them these inventors of the largest possible box with the smallest possible surface for provisions liable to dry; and I ask them how such logical inspirations and so much rational foresight can take birth in the obscure brain of the lower orders of creation.