Part 18

Probably not one person in a thousand has ever seen a whippoorwill. Its melancholy song is one of the most familiar chords in the symphony of the summer evening but to the majority of listeners it is only a disembodied voice in the dark. The singer has come about as near to achieving invisibility as any living creature.

The whippoorwill is a migrant bird, spending its winters in Florida and its summers from March to October in the north. It travels entirely at night, sometimes in large flocks. It builds no nest but lays its flecked eggs on the ground depending on the flickering shadows of the woodland over the background of dried leaves to conceal them.

The bird is masterfully camouflaged by nature and usually selects a spot for its eggs where the woodland floor is free of underbrush and the trees are spaced far enough apart to cast an uneven shade. The male presumably sleeps all day while the female sits on the eggs or broods the newly hatched young, but at night he stands guard, may take his turn on the nest, and hunts insects for his mate.

The chick, almost exactly the color of the dead leaves among which it lies, remains essentially invisible. Nests are found only by accident.

Whippoorwills live almost exclusively on night-flying insects, especially moths and mosquitoes. They have been recorded, however, as sometimes hunting for worms, beetles and ants under bark, or on the ground.

The bird makes no particular effort to conceal itself from humans. Apparently it does not regard them as dangerous. There are cases where it actually has lit on the head of a man standing motionless in the dark. The female has been observed to fly about carrying her young between her thighs. She also, it has been reported, sometimes carries them in her bill, but there is no satisfactory evidence of this.

The whippoorwill is fond of taking dust baths. Sometimes one is caught by the lights of an approaching auto as it dusts itself in the middle of a country road.

The bird is remarkable for the regularity of its song and for the number of times the melancholy refrain is repeated without a pause. From 150 to 200 is not unusual. The naturalist John Burroughs claimed once to have counted 1058 such repetitions. The song is continuous from dusk until about 9:30 and from about 2 until dawn. It is heard rarely in the intervening hours.

The whippoorwill, it is pointed out in a Smithsonian report, has come to depend almost exclusively on darkness for its protection. For this reason it has suffered little, as have many other birds, with the cutting away of the forests and the advances of cities. Its enemies in the dark are some hawks, owls and foxes, but has exceptional powers of flight which often enable it to escape even when discovered.

The birds linger in the north only until the first killing frosts which destroy or drive into shelter the insects on which they feed. Then they start their night migrations southward which sometimes carry them as far as Central America.

Ants Can Smell Almost Anything

The sense of smell is remarkably acute in all ants—at least equalling that of dogs.

The outstanding ant odor is that of formic acid, which is somewhat like that of illuminating gas, exuded from the bodies of all species. But this is only the smell of the race. It must be subject to an infinite number of variations to most of which ants alone are sensitive. They know their comrades, even after a long separation. Famed naturalist Sir John Lubbock once returned some ants to their old nest after a separation of 21 months. They were amicably received and evidently recognized as friends. On the other hand if a strange ant is placed in a nest of her own species she is at once attacked.

Dr. William M. Wheeler insists that even the human nose can detect some different species and even, in a few cases, different castes by their odors. Thus, over and above the formic acid smell, the smell of one species suggests ether, of another lemon-geranium, and of still another rotten coconuts.

At least one species of ant has three distinct odors: 1. A scent deposited by the feet, forming an individual trail by which she retraces her own steps. 2. An inherent odor of the whole body which is identical for all of the same lineage and a means of recognizing blood relatives. 3. A nest odor, consisting of the commingled odors of all members of the colony, used to distinguish their nest from the nests of aliens.

Evidently the odor of ants changes with age. It has been pointed out that “a cause of feud between ants of the same species living in different communities is a difference of odor arising out of difference of age in the queen whose progeny constitute the communities.” Ants apparently not only differentiate the innate odors peculiar to the species, sex, caste and individual, but also the incurred odor of the nest and environment. As worker ants advance in age their progressive odor intensifies or changes to such a degree that they may be said to attain a new odor every two or three months.

Fish That Fish For Fish

There are fish that fish for fish with worms. That is, they use wormlike appendages of their own bodies, developed through millenia of evolution, to catch worm-eating fellow fishes. This curious quirk of fishing fish is revealed in a bulletin of the International Oceanographic Foundation.

The practice is confined to the pediculati, known as angler fishes. The best known of them lies on the bottom partially concealed in sand or mud. One of the spines of its dorsal fin is extended in the form of a jointed fishing rod. At the end there is a fleshy lump, with a striking resemblance to one of the most tasty marine worms. The fish lies perfectly still with its enormous mouth closed, while the wormlike end of its rod waves to and fro. Other fishes approach the lure until they come within striking range. Then the great mouth opens with remarkable speed and engulfs the prey, which is prevented from escaping by backward-directed teeth.

Some other deep-sea anglers have luminous lures at the tip of the rod, somewhat like a small, light-emitting fish. In the total darkness of deep waters this is fatally attractive. Because of the huge size of the angler’s mouth the prey may be almost as large as the fisherman. Other deep-sea fishes dispense with the rod but have light-emitting organs on the sides of the body. These must play some part in attracting other sea animals. Some of these luminous fishes are able to swallow other fishes many times their own size because of their ability to distend their mouths and throats.

About all the ways man has devised for catching fish have been devised by fishes themselves long before man came on the scene. Traps—for example. There is a fish in Florida waters known as the greater sand eel. It lies buried in the sand, with its great mouth open. A relative, the lesser sand eel, when frightened dives into what seems like an opening in the sand. The result is that the greater sand eel is nearly always found with a lesser sand eel, head down, in its stomach.

The ways of fish are being studied with the possibility of finding something human fishermen have not yet thought about. Thus far nothing strikingly new has developed. There recently has been much interest, says the report, in “electric fishing—either stunning fish or directing them into nets by means of electric currents.” But, it is pointed out, “the fishes themselves have long ago adopted this for their own use.” The electric ray on each side of its flat, round body has an area in which numerous cells are modified to produce electricity. This is not really so amazing when we consider that electrical impulses are generated normally in small amounts by both nerve and muscle cells. In these particular fishes, however, the electrical impulses are considerable and the arrangement of cells, like those of a battery, builds up a total electric potential sufficient to stun or even kill smaller animals in the surrounding water.

In only one case has man been able to use fish to catch fish. This has been by means of the remora, or sucking fish, which has the habit of attaching itself by means of suckers to other fishes. In 1494 Columbus witnessed the use of a captive remora for capturing turtles. It still is used for this purpose in parts of Australia and China.

The sucker fish has quite strong powers of adhesion. In the ordinary course of its life it attaches itself to sharks or other large fishes and enjoys a free ride until it comes across food. When used for fishing, it is fastened with a line around its tail and tethered to the canoe. The native paddles as close as possible to the intended victim without disturbing it. The remora then is thrown into the water toward the turtle, to which it automatically attaches itself. Once the remora is securely fixed to the turtle, the fisherman carefully plays his light line until the reptile is brought into the boat. This must be done with care because of the diving habits of turtles. They are likely to run away with lines, sucker fishes and all.

Worms That Are Flowers

There are carnation worms and chrysanthemum worms. There are fairy gardens of worm asters and cornflowers at the bottom of the sea. Pink, red, purple, green, and yellow petals are tentacles of worms whose tube-encased bodies, stems of the flowers animals, are buried in inshore bottom ooze or mud-filled rock crevices.

Among these worms are masons and architects that build the houses in which they pass their lives brick by brick and pebble by pebble, with an exquisite craftsmanship hardly rivaled among animals. The blossoms and architecture have, so far as known, no utilitarian function. Nature is a painter and a poet. Forever she probes with intellect, instinct, and emotion to capture fleeting fragments of colors, lights, and harmonies of the ineffable which can be woven into the material garments of life. Among her notable successes are the sabellids and serpulids and terefillids. They are tube-dwellers—thus distinguished from their free-wandering kin—polychaetes such as the fearsome Aphrodites. Many of them have been given the names of the golden-haired nymphs who, mounted on sea horses, formed the retinue of Poseidon in mythology. Loveliest of these nymphs was Amphitrite, who became the bride of the sea god and queen of the coral-forested deep. Quite appropriately, among the fairest of the sabellids is the amphitrite, essentially world-wide in distribution.

These worms are especially facile as builders. One, for example, makes the brick with which it erects the cylindrical house that is its home for life. Extending from its head are sixteen tentacles, eight on each side, fringed with petal-like outgrowths. These tentacles are joined by membranes at the base so that, when extended, they have the appearance of two fans. When the fans are brought in contact, they form a funnel with which the animal collects mud. At the bottom of this funnel is “a singular organ by which the mud, mixed with a cement-like secretion of the worm itself, is moulded into pellets. These pellets are laid, one by one, like bricks, to form the walls of a flexible tube from twelve to fifteen inches long and about as thick as a goose quill.”