The Instinct of Feigning Death 199 



that conscious deception plays no part in the process. 



The attitudes assumed by insects and other forms 

 when feigning death are usually quite different from 

 those of dead specimens. This general fact was 

 pointed out by Darwin, who says that "I carefully 

 noted the simulated positions of seventeen different 

 kinds of insects (including an lulus, spider and Onis- 

 cus) belonging to distinct genera, both poor and 

 first-rate shammers; afterward I procured naturally 

 dead specimens of some of these insects, others I 

 killed with camphor by an easy slow death; the 

 result was that in no instance was the attitude ex- 

 actly the same, and in several instances the atti- 

 tudes of the feigners and of the really dead were 

 as unlike as they possibly could be." 



The attitudes of animals in the death feint are 

 frequently very characteristic. Many beetles as well 

 as other forms feign with the legs drawn up to 

 the body and the antennae closely appressed, so that 

 the whole insect assumes as compact a form as pos- 

 sible. The woodlouse, Armadillo, rolls itself up into 

 a ball with its legs drawn into the center, a habit 

 which has doubtless caused the name pill-bug to be 

 given to this crustacean. A beetle, Geotrupes, ac- 

 cording to Kirby and Spence, "when touched or in 

 fear sets out its legs as stiff as if they were made of 

 iron wire which is their posture when dead and 

 remaining motionless thus deceives the rooks which 

 prey upon them. A different attitude is assumed by 

 one of the tree-chafers probably with the same end 



