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.

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$mentioned differs but little in essentials from that of the Sphinx larvae, which bring into prominence the eye-like markings on their sides when alarmed, and thus seem to mimic small reptiles or mammals. One such caterpillar^ is not uncommon in Nawnchik and Patalung during April. It feeds on a species of Caladium^ growing in marshy localities, and is generally found on the underside of the broad leaves, in the shadow of which it may easily be mistaken for a small gecko which has lost its tail; though geckos do not live in the marshes, and though its eye-spots are perfectly round, more like the eyes of a snake than those of a gecko in the daytime. In some cases structures which are alarming at one stage of an animal’s existence may be mimetic or protective at another. The case of the larva of our English Lobster Moth {Stauropus fagiy, which in its youth is said to mimic an ant, is so well known that I need only refer to it. In lower Siam there is a common cater- pillar, of what family it is impossible to say, which has a series of curious long, flattened processes rising in three rows from the dorsal surface of the anterior part of the body. When the animal is walking these structures are kept in constant motion. They may be supposed to alarm its enemies by their movements, and certainly they give the full-grown caterpillar no aid by concealing it or by making it resemble any other animal. But I have been completely deceived by a very young specimen of this form. It was hanging by a thread from a tree, and looked so extremely spider-like as it hung, that I captured it to add to our collection of spiders. Nor was I undeceived before the insect was in my spirit-tube; for in the Malay jungle there are many Araneids with elongated abdomens. An animal which is habitually of an alarming appearance may even lose this appearance periodically. At Aring, one afternoon in the beginning of September, a caterpillar nearly allied to Stawropus fagi^ and probably belonging to the same genus, came under my notice. When first I saw it I mistook it for a bird’s dropping. It was seated on the edge of a leaf of Melastoma polyanthum^ with the anterior and posterior regions of its body bent towards one another, with the true legs folded together upon the under surface of the thorax, and the abdominal feet firmly clutching the edge of the leaf. The body was bent over so that one side lay on the upper surface of the leaf, parallel to the mid-rib. The insect was motionless. Its skin was smooth and shiny; intense black in colour, except for some vivid white markings about the middle of the body. The likeness to a bird’s dropping was not exact, because these white markings were at the ’ The Malays do not appear to have any superstitious dread of this cater- pillar, such as is felt by the Irish for that of the Elephant Hawk Moth (^ChcBTOcampa elpenor), a form to which it bears a close resemblance. For the Irish beliefs with regard to the caterpillar, see Miss Ormerod’s Eeports, 1898, pp. 72-73. 2 The ^‘Kladi maboTc'' or Sick Caladium, so called because, unlike some other species, it is inedible. 2 See Poulton, Journ. Linn. Soc., Zool. xxvi. pi. 40, and ‘ Colours of Animals.' [20]$