Animal Parasites and MessmatesBeneden, P. J. van (Pierre Joseph)
Science
Animal Parasites and Messmates
Beneden, P. J. van (Pierre Joseph)
Parasites
In his opinion, the worm had lost its way in the mouse, as the tænia
of the cat could live only in the cat. Flourens considered it a
romance when I myself announced to the "Institut de France," that
cestode worms must _necessarily_ pass from one animal to another xxiii
in order to complete the phases of their evolution.
At the present time, experiments respecting these transmigrations are
repeated every day in the laboratories of zoology with the same
success; and Mons. R. Leuckart, who directs with so much talent the
Institute of Leipzig, has discovered, in concert with his pupil
Mecznikow, transmigrations of worms accompanied by changes of sex;
that is to say, they have seen nematodes, the parasites of the lungs
of the frog, always female or hermaphrodite, produce individuals of
the two sexes which do not resemble their mother, and whose habitual
abode is not in the lungs of the frog but in damp earth. In other
words, let us imagine a mother, born a widow, who cannot exist without
the assistance of others, producing boys and girls able to provide for
themselves. The mother is parasitical and viviparous, her daughters
are, during their whole life, free and oviparous.
This observation leads us to another sexual singularity, lately
observed, of males and females of different kinds in one and the same
species, and which give birth to progeny which do not resemble each
other; the same animals, or rather the same species, proceed from two
different eggs fecundated by different spermatozoids.
Now that these transmigrations are perfectly known and admitted, the
starting-point of the inquiry has been so entirely forgotten that the
honour of the discovery has been frequently attributed to
fellow-workers, who had no knowledge of it till the demonstration had
been completed, and the new interpretation generally accepted. But let
us return to our subject.
The assistance rendered by animals to each other is as varied as that xxiv
which is found amongst men. Some receive merely an abode, others
nourishment, others again food and shelter; we find a perfect system
of board and lodging combined with philozoic institutions arranged in
the most perfect manner. But if we see by the side of these paupers,
some which render to one another mutual services, it would be but
little flattering to them to call all indiscriminately either
parasites or messmates (_commensaux_). We think that we should be more
just to them if we designated the latter kinds _mutualists_, and thus
_mutuality_ will take its place by the side of _mess-table_
arrangements (_commensalism_) and of parasitism.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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