Part 36

Billions of small, transparent and essentially invisible arrow worms. One species, about a half inch long, apparently is the kangaroo of the worm world.

An important element of the bottom fauna at Point Barrow, Alaska, are the lace worms. Hardly a stone in the area does not have at least one lace or moss patch.

There is a delicately peach-colored sea anemone, a bottom-dwelling animal remotely related to the coral polyps, which display an amazing phenomenon, according to a Smithsonian report by Dr. G. E. MacGintie: “When it was subjected to unfavorable conditions, such as overcrowding in a pan of water,” he says, “It cast out through the mouth a translucent, white inner lining with transparent, stubby tentacles. These tentacles were tiny anemones. If conditions remained adverse more offspring were cast off, each lot smaller than its predecessor.” That is, when in trouble the animal spits out babies—presumably an emergency measure for preservation of the species and a way of reproduction not hitherto recorded. Apparently the same phenomenon occurs in the sea. Partly-grown specimens of these offspring dredged from the bottom, at first were mistaken for new species. Some of these sea anemones are quite colorful—one purplish red, one lavender, one lemon-yellow, and one with translucent, peach-colored tentacles.

Numerically the most abundant animals of the Arctic are the amphipod fleas which form an important food source for fish and seals. Great numbers live on the undersides of ice cakes from which the bearded seal sweeps them with its whiskers.

Fish That Live on Land

Siam and Burma are the lands of queer fish—climbing fish, stone-eating fish, hunting fish, dry-land fish, singing fish and archer fish.

In the distant geological past, life on this planet was confined to the seas. Eventually some creature belonging to the common ancestry of terrestrial animals and fish emerged from the water and over a period of countless generations, established itself on land. Something of the same general sort of development may be taking place in Siamese lakes and rivers today, with a new kind of land animal in the process of evolution. Currently, two or three species of fish are learning to live out of water for considerable periods. At least one of them appears to have reached the stage where it must breathe air to survive.

These evolving dry land fish were studied intensively by the late Dr. Hugh M. Smith, fisheries advisor to the Siamese government for twelve years. One is a species somewhat like a perch in general appearance. It belongs to a group which has an accessory respiratory organ, perhaps the beginning of a lung, situated in a cavity above the gills, by which oxygen may be taken directly from the atmosphere. The gills themselves appear inadequate to sustain life. The fish probably would drown, although the process would be very slow, if kept too long under water.

A common method of fishing in Siam is with a spade. Some fish spend as much as four months of each year buried in damp soil. Local fishermen dig two or three feet deep in the marshes for them.

The Special Language of Bees

Study of bee language now has advanced to differentiation of bee dialects. Some years ago Dr. Karl von Frisch of the University of Munich established the fact that bees actually possessed a means by which they could communicate with each other and without which the remarkable organization within the swarm would have been nearly inexplicable. Their language consists primarily of signs, like that of deaf and dumb persons. Dr. von Frisch reached the point where he could get some idea of what the bees were talking about and even predict their behavior from their conversation.

Recently Dr. von Frisch has found that different varieties have quite different languages, perhaps as far apart as French and German; one variety cannot tell what another is discussing. He has gone one step further—to the discovery that the insects probably talk also in sounds that are inaudible to the human ear. The audible buzzing is not a means of communication.

“There are indications,” he says in a report to the Rockefeller Foundation, “that sounds, probably in the supersonic range, play a role in their communications.

“Physiologically it would be interesting to know how they judge distance. Their dances indicate with remarkable exactness the distance between the hive and the feeding place. How do they adjust themselves to the changing positions of the sun when they use it as a compass? Apparently they have an excellent memory for time, for they seem to know that the sun at a certain time will occupy a certain place in the heavens.”

Dr. von Frisch and his colleagues at the University of Munich are also making an intensive study of the insect eye and the physiology of the insect sense of smell. Previous research has shown that worker bees have a special scent gland under voluntary control. Only when a good source of nectar is found is the fragrance, evidently quite powerful and attractive to other bees, released. Then it permeates the immediate neighborhood. It is the bee language equivalent for the word “Here.” When a cruising worker gets a whiff of this odor it knows there is a plentiful supply of nectar close at hand and starts a search for it.

Bees cannot distinguish red from black, Dr. von Frisch has found. This probably is the reason so few red-blossoming plants depend on these insects for distributing their pollen. Nearly all red-blossoming species depend on birds and butterflies, both of which are acutely sensitive to red. One notable exception, however, is the European poppy whose brilliant red blossoms carpet the landscape in late Spring. The German experimenter has found that these blossoms are not “red” to the bee. They possess a color which cannot be described because it cannot be experienced by the human eye. The poppy blossoms reflect a great deal of the ultraviolet light in sunshine and to this the bee eye is extremely sensitive. The color must be quite different from any of the shades at the blue end of the spectrum which are visible to man. To the bee it is probably somewhat like violet.

Even the more or less degenerate human nose can be trained to discriminate some of the bee odors that apparently have so much meaning in the life of the hive. After practising for a few months Dr. N. E. McIndoo of the U. S. Department of Agriculture was able to recognize the three castes—queens, drones and workers—merely by smelling them. With more practice he was able to make even finer discriminations, as he reports:

“The younger the workers the less pronounced is the odor emitted. To the human nose the odor from nurse bees and wax generators is much less pronounced than is that from old workers. Workers just emerged from the cells have a faint, sweetish odor, but lack the characteristic bee odor and workers removed from the cells just before they begin cutting their way out omit a still fainter sweetish odor.

“Old queens have a strong sweetish odor, while that of queens just emerged from cells is much pronounced as is the bee odor of the workers. The majority of old drones have a faint odor while every young drone has a stronger one. It is slightly different from that of young workers and is less sweetish.

“All the offspring of the same queen seem to inherit a peculiar odor from her, which becomes the family odor. Apparently each worker emits an individual odor which is different from that of any other worker.

“Of all odors, that of the hive is most important. It seems to be the most fundamental factor upon which the social life of the colony depends, and upon which the social habit perhaps was acquired.”

Taste discrimination is roughly parallel to that of humans. The bee certainly can distinguish the primary tastes, sweet, salty, sour and bitter. It naturally is keenly sensitive to different degrees of sweetness, yet some sugars which are extremely sweet to man are tasteless to the insects. The same is true of such sweeteners as saccharin. The bee’s sense of smell also runs parallel to that of man, both in the ability to discriminate fine difference in odors and in the thresholds of sensitivity. This appears to be a very important factor in the location of nectar-bearing flowers. However, the bee appears unable to detect an odor from any great distance. It is probably due to the sense of smell that scout bees are able to locate good feeding grounds. After marking them with their own peculiar secreted odor they return immediately to the hive to tell the others about them. The dance of a returned scout varies in intensity according to the richness of the find and the workers who witness it become correspondingly excited. If the scout executes only a feeble dance there is only a small exodus from the hive.

Poisonous Platters of the Sea

One of the most dreaded of all sea creatures is the venomous sting ray of which there are several hundred species distributed over the world, mostly in tropical waters. On the upper side of the tail is a saw-toothed bone dagger from two to fifteen inches long which can be driven through a man’s leg. The teeth extrude a venom quite similar to that of the rattlesnake.

Largest is the giant sting ray of Australian waters. A full-grown specimen weighs about 800 pounds. The fearsome and gruesome bat sting ray of the California coast weighs up to 200 pounds and is quite abundant.

All the rays are bottom dwelling animals, leading sedentary lives on flat, sandy ground. All are carnivorous, devouring smaller fish and mollusks. Fortunately they are not very aggressive and will flee from man if given warning. Still, life guard stations along the California beaches reported nearly 400 injuries from the creatures in the summer of 1952.

Our Un-American Food

A half dozen vanished civilizations make their contributions to the American Thanksgiving dinner: onions from ancient Egypt, peas from Ethiopia, parsnips and turnips from ancient China.