SOLIFUGAE 93 



species have not much faculty of vision, taste or hearing, but his 

 experiments are open to the objection that he was testing the 

 responses of the animals to unnatural stimuli which they do not 

 encounter in their normal life. The chief sense is that of touch, 

 which is located in the innumerable hairs with which the body is 

 covered. The contest is usually more an exhibition of swiftness 

 than of any particular strategical skill, the victim being quickly 

 macerated by the jaws of its ferocious enemy. 



Duels between rival Solifugids are usually more prolonged. The 

 combatants rush at each other, their pedipalps taking the im- 

 mediate shock and warding off the ponderous jaws. After this the 

 contest becomes very variable. Sometimes the animals rock from 

 side to side, their bodies kept apart by their projecting pedipalps 

 like wrestlers at arm's length waiting for a chance to secure a grip. 

 At others they come quickly in to closer apposition and their jaws 

 interlock as they struggle to get a vital grip. Given the slightest 

 opportunity one will drive its chelicerae into the soft parts of its 

 opponent and the struggle ends. Not infrequently however the 

 interlocking jaws are disengaged and the wrestlers spring apart 

 only to charge again, when one may overwhelm the other. 



Savory (1928)* writes that during the Great War Solifugae be- 

 came familiar to the troops in Egypt and the Near East where 

 Galeodes arahs is common. The soldiers named them 'jerry- 

 manders' and admired them for their ferocity. At one time the 

 men stationed at Aboukir kept pet Solifugae and matched them 

 like fighting cocks. Each Company had its champion and bets 

 were freely laid on the results of the fights. Size is not always a 

 decisive factor and it sometimes happens that a smaller individual 

 seizes its opponent between its too widely-opened jaws and con- 

 quers by holding on in a position in which the big creature is quite 

 helpless. Combats with scorpions usually result in the death of the 

 latter before they have time to use their stings. In 1942 in Libya, 

 my troop corporal kept a short-legged, black Rhagodes in a biscuit 

 tin on the back of his tank and fed it almost entirely on scorpions. 



In addition to their use as buffers in the hour of battle, when 

 they are of supreme importance, the pedipalps are used as im- 

 plements of feeding. They are stretched forward like long arms to 

 seize pieces of food with their terminal suckers. The morsels are 



