Animal Intelligence: The International Scientific Series, Vol. XLIV.Romanes, George John
Science
Animal Intelligence: The International Scientific Series, Vol. XLIV.
Romanes, George John
Animal behavior; Animal intelligence
Although the described plan of ventilation is
remarkable enough in itself, it is yet more remarkable
in that it is clearly only the result of bee-keeping,
and is evoked by this misfortune. For there could be
no need of such ventilation for bees in a state of
nature, whose dwellings in hollow trees and clefts of
rocks leave nothing to be desired as to roominess and
airiness, while in the narrow artificial hive this
need at once comes out strongly. In fact, the fanning
of the bees almost entirely ceased when Huber brought
them into large hives five feet high, in which there
was plenty of air. It follows, therefore, that the
fanning and ventilating can have absolutely nothing to
do with an inborn tendency or instinct, but have been
gradually evoked by necessity, thought, and
experience.
As the following observation on the cautious sagacity of wasps is, so
far as I am aware, new, and as it certainly does not admit of
mal-observation, I introduce it on the authority of a correspondent, the
Rev. Mr. J. W. Mossman, who writes from Tarrington Rectory, Wragby. He
found an apple in his orchard which had fallen from a tree in apparently
good condition; but on taking it up observed that it was little more
than a shell filled with wasps. Giving the apple a shake, he saw a wasp
slowly emerging from a single small aperture in the rind:--
This aperture was sufficient, and only just
sufficient, to admit of the ingress or egress of a
single wasp. The circumstance which struck me as very
remarkable was this--that the wasp did not make its
way through the aperture with its head first, as I
should have expected, but with its tail, darting out
its sting to its utmost extent, and brandishing it
furiously. In this manner it came out of the apple
backwards. Then, finding itself in the open air upon
the outer surface of the apple, it turned round, and
without any attempt to molest me, flew off in the
usual way. The moment this first wasp had emerged, the
sting and tail of another was seen protruding. This,
too, I watched with much interest, and exactly the
same process was repeated as in the case of the first.
I held the apple in my hand until some ten or a dozen
wasps had made their exit in the same identical manner
in each individual case. I then threw down the apple,
inside of which, however, there were still apparently
a good many wasps.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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