Part 11

Classes are mutually exclusive. But there are no wars in the treetops. When one group ventures near the border of a range claimed by another all the inhabitants get together and set up the most fiendish howling of which they are capable. The potential invaders stop and howl back, just as fiendishly. After a more or less prolonged session of this bloodless warfare both factions call it a day and go their peaceful ways. Any actual fight between howler gangs has not been reported by reliable witnesses.

Tyrants of the Polychaete Race

Knight-warriors and Amazons of the worm world are the aphroditids. They are the aristocrats and tyrants of the polychaete race.

Like the oriental Aphrodite whose name they bear—she was the mythical goddess of love and war who rose from the sea foam armed with golden spears which were the rays of the moon and sun she personified—they crawl over the beach sands resplendent in a bristling panoply of gold and green. Heavily armed for both offense and defense, their prey are all living things remotely their equals in size and strength.

For their battles they carry on their feet “an armory of harpoons, bayonets, lances, spears and billing hooks,” says the Rev. George Johnston in his catalogue of annelid worms in the British Museum. “Were it desirable to have any additions to man’s weapons of war,” he comments, “the aphrodite bayonet might furnish a model for a new kind as formidable as any we possess. It is armed with a kind of pricker affixed to the end of a musket. This appendage is very sharp, formed with several cutting surfaces, and with a spine below pointed backwards which gives it the properties and advantage of a harpoon. Hence, having been forced to penetrate the flesh, the point cannot be withdrawn, but is detached at once.

“This, however, is not the most curious part of the instrument. The bayonet part of the bristle is, in fact, a sheath which encloses another weapon that is exposed only when the scabbard is lost. When we detach the bayonet from the sheath, at the same time we force from its interior a horny stylette with a needle-like point ready to become a good defensive weapon.”

The terror of tidal beaches described by Dr. Johnston is the “sea mouse,” Aphrodite aculeata, an oval-shaped worm from six to eight inches long and two or three wide. It has from 30 to 50 large “feet” on each side of its body, each carrying an immense tuft of silky green and golden bristles and spines. Many have commented on the malevolent creature’s beauty and capacity for inspiring terror.

“The very brilliant iridescent hues,” Dr. Johnston says, “are not equalled by the colors of the most brilliant butterflies.” “It does not yield in brilliance to the plumage of humming birds or even to the most shining gems,” wrote the great French naturalist Baron Cuvier, credited with the original description of the animal.

Normally it moves by jet propulsion. As it goes forward, a current of water is projected with considerable force at short intervals from its rear end. Progress ordinarily is slow, but the sea mouse is capable of considerable speed when pursuing a slow-moving prey. It frequently can be observed motionless, watching a weaker worm or mollusk upon which it is prepared quickly to pounce at a favorable opportunity.

Some of these animals, Dr. Johnston observes, “have 500 feet on each side of the body. Each foot has two branches and each branch at least one spine and one brush of bristles. Thus an individual has at least 1,000 spines. If we reckon ten bristles to each brush, it has at least 10,000.”

The bristles, presumably, are almost entirely for defense; the spines for offense, and admirably fashioned for killing weaker animals. Both types of weapons can be retracted entirely inside the foot when not in use, but thrust out again immediately when needed.

Aphrodite hermione, a close relative of the sea mouse, Dr. Johnston points out, “has in the dorsal branch of its feet bristles which may be described as lances. They are so small that a magnifying glass is needed to discover the workmanship, which excels in finish the finest instrument of man by the skill of the most expert artificer. A great number of these bristles garnish the extremity of each foot, and as they are stiff and serially arranged they form a hedge of spears around the body of the worm, placing it within a square of pointed pikes threatening at all points. Other bristles terminate in a knob within which is a barbed lance.”

Still others are likened by Dr. Johnston to harpoons, produced from the body only as required. They are very sharply pointed bristles with the point attached to a shaft. The harpoon point, like the bayonet previously described, has a reverted tooth which cannot be withdrawn once it has been plunged into the body of the enemy. It can, however, be detached and left to fester in the wound. Some worms lose all their harpoons in their many fights.

“There is scarcely a single weapon invented by the murderous genius of man,” commented the French naturalist Quatrefages concerning aphroditids on Bay of Biscay coasts, “whose counterpart and model could not be found among these worms. Here are the curved blades whose points present a double and prolonged cutting surface, sometimes on the concave edge as in the yataghan of the Arabs, sometimes on the convex border as in the oriental scimitar. We meet with weapons of offense and defense which remind us of the broad sword of our cuirassiers; the sabre-poignard of the artilleryman; the sabre-baionette of the chausseurs. We have harpoons, fishhooks, cutting blades in every form attached to the extremities of sharp handles. Destined to live by rapine and exposed to a hundred enemies, they need such weapons both for attacking and defense.”

Some aphroditids swim with ease. The majority, however, are found between tide marks where they burrow in wet sand. A few occasionally trespass in tidal rivers. When placed in fresh water the animals soon die, in their death throes first ejecting a milky-white fluid which turns to blackish-green at the moment of death. Despite their heavy armament, the aphroditids are a favorite food of codfish. They are distributed generally all over the world. The monster of the race in the South Pacific sometimes reaches a length of five feet.

Eating Habits of Spiders

Spiders digest most of their food before eating. They must subsist on a liquid diet. A powerful digestive fluid from the stomach is discharged on the prey. This completely liquifies the soft tissues. So potent is this fluid that spiders sometimes can devour small back-boned animals, such as fish and lizards, which they kill with their poison fangs. One African species can liquify almost completely a fish two inches long in less than three hours. Another has been observed in captivity to dispose of small snakes in the same way.

The Suicide Instinct of Iguanas

Some iguanas seem to have the ability to commit suicide without any visible means. Some of these lizards, hitherto unknown to science, captured alive and uninjured in Cuba by Dr. Paul Bartsch of the Smithsonian Institution, died a few minutes later as if a mere wish to end their lives were sufficient to achieve death.

“These iguanas are vegetable feeders,” Dr. Bartsch recorded in his field notes. “They are fairly tame and persisted in chasing the nooses on the ends of our sticks, instead of running their heads through them or letting us place them around their necks. When hard-pressed they finally dash into holes that look like huge crab burrows. When near the coast, where there is a hurricane rampart, they seek refuge in crevices of the rocks. We were surprised when we took those we had captured from our bag on board ship to find four of them dead. Evidently they have a way of ending their own lives.”

On Petite Gonave Island off the coast of Haiti are large iguanas which—native fishermen say—can be captured safely only by getting them drunk. Travellers are warned that they are extremely dangerous animals when sober. The fishermen pour rum into hollows of rocks along the shore. The big lizards appear to be very fond of this beverage and drink themselves helpless.

Forests That Eat Meat

Relic groves of the great meat-eating forests of 150,000,000 years ago still thrive on the floors of deep, warm seas.

These are made up of plant-animals—predacious trees with red blood and hearts—the crinoids. There are about 700 extant, compared to more than a thousand extinct, species. For a hundred million years they were among the ocean’s dominant life forms. Fossil crinoids, or “stone lilies,” make up great marble beds in both American and Europe. In 1934 the Smithsonian Johnson expedition dredged nineteen species, including two not hitherto known to science, from the bottom of the great Porto Rico Deep.

The crinoids are highly developed animals, although they look like plants. They can by no means be considered as a form of life on the dividing line of the animal and vegetable worlds. Rather they are animals which have taken on the superficial appearance of plants. They are very highly specialized animals—so much so that there are few places in the world where they can survive in great numbers.

In life they usually are brilliantly colored. Judging from those that are found on the sea bottoms today one of the ancient meat-eating forests must have presented a very colorful spectacle of red, green, purple and yellow “blossoms.”

Most of them live in deep water. There are free-moving varieties as well as those that are fixed to the bottom with stems like plants. Until recent years few were recovered in good condition because of the tendency of one of these plant-animals to break itself to pieces when agitated. When brought up from the bottom to the deck of a ship the crinoid would proceed to break off the featherlike arms which make up the blossoms. This was its natural defense reaction in the depths. Its way of escape when one of its arms was seized by a fish was to break it off. Then it could grow another quite easily. As a matter of fact, this is the way the crinoid grows—one of the most wasteful processes of growth in nature. It breaks off one arm and grows two instead; but it cannot increase the number of its arms without discarding an old one.

Another difficulty is that the gorgeous colors of the meat-eating flowers are fast only in salt water. They fade rapidly in air, fresh water or alcohol so that there can be only a fleeting impression of the true coloration.