Observations on the habits and natural surroundings of insects made during the 'Skeat expedition' to the Malay peninsula, 1899-1900 / by Nelson Annandale.
- Nelson Annandale
- Date:
- 1900
Licence: In copyright
Credit: Observations on the habits and natural surroundings of insects made during the 'Skeat expedition' to the Malay peninsula, 1899-1900 / by Nelson Annandale. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.
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![then botanist to the Expedition, together with a spray of the flowers and leaves of an acacia among which he had found it. The flowers of this tree are very much like tho'C of the common Mimosa, but larger in size and of a far less brilliant shade of yellow. The leaves are much divided. Mr. Yapp tells me that he found the specimen on a tree near the edge of a buffulo-lawn across the Kelantan river opposite Aring, about eleven o’clock in the fore- noon. Even in the dim light of the mosque in which we were then staying the insect was very inconspicuous among the flowers; and when it was taken out into the brilliant sunshine it completely disappeared among the shadows cast by them and the leaves. The dark bars on its body and limbs were slightly wider than the spaces between the pinnules of the acacia-leaves, and the prominences on the ventral surface of the abdomen were of the shape, though not of the colour, of the prominent parts on the unopened flower- buds ; for it will be noticed that the buds w^ere green, while the structures on the insect’s body vAere pale pink. These prominences were conspicuous ; but the lights and shadows among the feathery leaves and fur-like flowers were so confused that a difference in colour detracted little from the similitude between the abdomen, cut into as it was by the black bars which were conspicuous on its edges but interrupted in its middle line, and the distal extremity of one of the racemose inflorescences of the acacia. The insect and the flower had not a single colour in common intrinsically; and yet, under given conditions of climate, the colours of the two became indistinguishable from one another. The Malays at Aring called this insect Striped Kanchong ; but the name was evidently invented for the occasion. The plant on which it was found being a tree and not a shrub, it was much more liable to escape detection, even had the acacia been as common as the “ Ehododendron,” There are plenty of similar acacias in Kelantan, and there is no reason why the Mantis should confine itself to one species, for its colour and form are adapted for concealment among any flowers and leaves of this peculiar type. The possession of leaf or petal-like expansions on the limbs is a peculiarity shared by many Mantids with leaf-like insects of dif- ferent groups, but as a rule their outline is not so regular as it is in the case of this species and of Hymenopiis. With regard to the origin of such structures and their primitive function, it is worth wlnle noticing their rudimentary condition, whether it be a specific or merely a pupal character, in forms like this Striped Harpagid from Kelantan. It cannot be said that in this case they give any direct aid in concealing the insect by resembling petals of a flower or any other vegetable organ. But, especially where we get the extremes of light and shade, any little irregularity of outline or projection from the surface of the body of an animal may give it a distinct aid in hiding itself. This is truer in the case of the smaller invertebrates than it is in that of vertebrates, though the principle is well exemplified by many fish, and not a few lizards, that live among terrestrial and aquatic plants. A large nocturnal [13]](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b22406451_0017.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
