i So 



POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



of time they would remain in a motionless condition. Similar experi- 

 ments have been made on other insects by different observers, who have 

 all arrived at the conclusion 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 Oniscus) belonging to 

 distinct genera, both poor 

 and first-rate shammers ; 

 afterward I procured nat- 

 urally 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 exactlv the same, 

 and in several instances the 

 attitudes 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 fre- 

 quently 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, Arma- 

 dillo, rolls itself up into a 

 ball with its legs drawn into 

 the center, a habit which lias doubtless caused the name pill-bug to be 

 given to this crustacean. A beetle, Geotrupes, according 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 in view. It sometimes elevates its posterior legs into the air, so as 

 to form a straight vertical line, at right angles with the upper surface 

 of its body." 



KlG. 1. 



Lakva of a Geomf.tkid Moth attached 

 to a Twig. 



