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

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.

19/36 page 853

$colour and form. Among these leaves, the head and wings, though they are inconspicuous, are not invisible; the wings may be detected because they are transparent and glary, the head because it is held well raised above the surface on which the insect is sitting. Seen in such surroundings, there is nothing that would lead a human being to judge that the Mantis was a predaceous animal. Indeed, it bears a general likeness to a moth or a non-predaceous Neuropteron, not particular enough, perhaps, to justify one in saying that it “mimics” any other form, but sufficiently marked to deceive one as to its real nature. The fact that a specimen of the Mantis was found concealed in a dead tree would lend colour to the idea that it is nocturnal, as a large proportion of the Mantidm appear to be. But it is quite possible that it may be sufficiently active in the daytime to seize any prey which comes within its reach. If so, it affords an instance that may be compared with that of the Kanchong. While the latter simulates a flower, and so actually allures its prey, the former sits still and looks harmless, so that its prey chances to come to it uninvited. The difference seems to me to be one of degree. Supposing that a green Mantis were seated among leaves of the same colour as its own body, and that a phytophagous insect alighted upon it, it might then be said to be an instance of “ alluring ” coloration. Whereas if the insect only alighted near it, the Mantis would scarcely come under this category. In any case the adaptation appears to be calculated to deceive Arthropod prey rather than mammalian enemies. The Mantidse are well adapted for self-defence, and the movements of the Kanchong, at any rate, betray the insect to vertebrate eyes. The curious prolongation of the head in Ceratomantis is not a feature of any systematic value ; many other Mantids, belonging to widely separate genera, have a similar peculiarity. Undoubtedly, however, in this case it aids in masking the characteristic shape of the Mantid head; or, at any rate, appears to do so. With regard to the marking on the femora of the fore limbs, similar markings, often emphasized by yellow lines running parallel to them or across them, occur in the same position in a large number of Mantidse. I do not know that a function has ever been assigned to marks situated in this position except by the Kussian naturalist Porschinsky, whose interesting observations \ and imaginative explanations thereof. Professor Poulton has been kind enough to have translated for me from the Bussian. Porschinsky has a theory that ail eye-like markings on insects represent glands, which may be imagined to excrete a noxious fluid. He supposes that such markings simulate the liquid which has issued forth, with the blue sky or some other object reflected in it. He points out that the display of such spots is sometimes accompanied by a sound which might be taken to imitate liquid hissing out of a narrow opening such as the duct of a gland. Mantis religiosa is one of his examples. He says that there is a large ^ Lepidopterorum Kossise Biologia, iv. (Petersburg, 1893), p. 36, fig. 10. 56* [17J$