A Text-book of Entomology: Including the Anatomy, Physiology, Embryology and Metamorphoses of Insects for Use in Agricultural and Technical Schools and Colleges as Well as by the Working EntomologistPackard, A. S. (Alpheus Spring)
Science
A Text-book of Entomology: Including the Anatomy, Physiology, Embryology and Metamorphoses of Insects for Use in Agricultural and Technical Schools and Colleges as Well as by the Working Entomologist
Packard, A. S. (Alpheus Spring)
Insects
Finally, in what Viallanes regards as the most perfect type (Vespa), the
sides of the calices are folded and become sinuous, so as to increase
the surface, thus assuming an appearance which, he claims, strongly
recalls that of the convolutions of the brain of the mammals.
Cheshire also calls attention to a progression in the size of these
appendages, as well as in mental powers as we rise from the
cockchafer (_Melolontha vulgaris_) to the cricket, up to the
ichneumon, then to the carpenter bee, and finally to the social hive
bee, “where the pedunculated bodies form the ⅕ part of the volume of
the cerebral mass, and the 1⁄870 of the volume of the entire
creature, while in the cockchafer they are less than 1⁄2300 the
part. The size of the brain is also a gauge of intelligence. In the
worker bee the brain is 1⁄174 of the body; in the red ant, 1⁄296; in
the Melolontha, 1⁄3500; in the Dyticus beetle, 1⁄4400.” (Bees and
bee-keeping, p. 54.)
_g._ Functions of the nerve-centres and nerves
As we have seen, the central seat of the functions of the nervous system
is not the brain alone (supraœsophageal ganglion), but each ganglion is
more or less the seat of vital movements, those of the abdomen being
each a distinct motor and respiratory centre. The two halves of a
ganglion are independent of each other.
According to Faivre, the brain is the seat of the will and of the power
of coördinating the movements of the body, while the infraœsophageal
ganglion is the seat of the motive power and also of the will.
The physiological experiments of Binet, which are in the line of those
of Faivre, but more thorough, demonstrate that an insect may live for
months without a brain, if the subœsophageal ganglion is left intact,
just as a vertebrate may exist without its cerebrum. As Kenyon says:
“Faivre long ago showed that the subœsophageal ganglion is the seat of
the power of coördination of the muscular movements of the body. Binet
has shown that the brain is the seat of the power directing these
movements. ‘A debrained hexapod will eat when food is placed beneath its
palpi, but it cannot go to its food even though the latter be but a very
small space removed from its course or position. Whether the insect
would be able to do so if the mushroom bodies only were destroyed, and
the antennal lobes, optic lobes, and the rest of the brain were left
intact, is a question that yet remains to be answered’” (Kenyon).
In insects which are beheaded, however readily they respond to
stimulation of the nerves, they are almost completely wanting in will
power. Yet insects which have been decapitated can still walk and fly.
Hymenoptera will live one or two days after decapitation, beetles from
one to three days, and moths (Agrotis) will show signs of life five days
after the loss of their head.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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