A Book of Nimble Beasts: Bunny Rabbit, Squirrel, Toad, and "Those Sort of People"English, Douglas
General
A Book of Nimble Beasts: Bunny Rabbit, Squirrel, Toad, and "Those Sort of People"
English, Douglas
Animals -- Juvenile literature
And now for the sheep who are just as clever really as the wolves. Two
of these are caterpillars--quite the most curious pair of caterpillars
to be met with in this country--and the third is a sawfly. Sawflies get
their name from having an instrument with which they can bore or saw, as
the case may be, into leaves or trees, and this is the largest one we
have in England.
The hunter-insects, as we have seen, disguise themselves so as to get
near their victims unawares, and the hunted disguise themselves very
often in the same way so as to avoid being seen, but sometimes in such a
way that if they _are_ seen they may appear to be much more terrible
creatures than they really are. And so we have the sheep in wolves'
clothing.
[Illustration: THE ICHNEUMON FLY]
The hunters of the caterpillars are the ichneumon flies. Ichneumon flies
do not eat caterpillars but lay their eggs inside them. They have a
special instrument for the purpose, and when the grubs hatch out they
gradually eat away the fleshy parts of the caterpillar so that it seldom
has strength enough to turn into a chrysalis, let alone a butterfly, or
moth, or beetle, as the case may be. Now what is the chief enemy of a
fly? Why, of course, a spider. If then something which dreads an
ichneumon fly can make itself look like that fly's worst enemy, a
spider, it will have a good chance of scoring off the fly.
The Caterpillar of the Lobster Moth, of which I show you two pictures,
can do this to a nicety. He has, as you see, an extraordinary shape for
a caterpillar, I don't think that any other caterpillar in this country
has the same long skinny legs--and he is able to strike extraordinary
attitudes which make him look very spidery indeed, particularly from in
front, for then the two little spikes at the end of his lobster body
appear over the top of his head and look like a spider's pincers. Mother
Nature has been very careful of her Lobster Moth caterpillar. When he is
quite a baby he looks just like a little black ant. When he is asleep he
folds up his legs and looks like a shrivelled beech-leaf--he usually
feeds on beech--and, when he is attacked by an ichneumon fly (you can
make him think he is being attacked by tickling him with a paint-brush)
he turns himself at once into a sham spider, by throwing back his head
as far as it will go and shuddering his skinny legs in the air.
[Illustration: THE PUSS MOTH CATERPILLAR
As he looks when angry]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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