THE AMERICAN LOBSTER. 185 



of the dish, ou its side or back, as if paralyzed. Its appearance is now, however, 

 very different from that of a dead animal. The large chelipeds are stretched forward 

 in front of the head, and the other thoracic legs are drawn after them and held close 

 together with their tips pointing forward. It usually remained in this position from a 

 quarter of a minute to a minute, when it would slowly orient itself and begin to move 

 about, in a short time becoming very active. This lobster on one occasion remained 

 in this stiffened, apparently paralyzed condition for the space of eight minutes, and 

 would have continued in it a longer time still had it not been aroused. 



While lying at the bottom of the dish in this state, a convulsive movement 

 of the swimmerets was detected and a twitching of various muscles over the body. 

 The appendages sometimes quivered, as if the muscles were in tetanic contraction. The 

 chelipeds and other walking legs remained perfectly rigid. When the animal finally 

 recovered, the thoracic appendages were gradually relaxed and, putting itself in a 

 defensive attitude, it slowly swam off. 



If water is squirted at it with a pipette it will sometimes roll over and immedi- 

 ately straighten out as if dead. When disturbed and treated roughly with the finger 

 or a penholder, it stiffens in the same way; the abdomen is bent up slightly; all the 

 appendages are straightened out; the swimmerets are bent backward and can be seen 

 to quiver ; the beating of the scaphognathite does not cease. 



I have no doubt that this phenomenon is strictly analogous to the " shamming 

 death" of insects, but it is neither a habit nor an instinct. It is, perhaps, the raw 

 material, so to speak, out of which useful instincts are developed in some animals. 

 According to Darwin, there is great variation in the degree in which this instinct is 

 manifested in insects. He observed " a most perfect series, even within the same genus 

 (Ourculio and Chrysomela), from species which feign only for a second and sometimes 

 imperfectly, still moving their antennae (as with some Histers), and which will not 

 feign a second time however much irritated, to other species which, according to De 

 Geer, maybe cruelly roasted at a slow fire, without the slightest movement — toothers, 

 again, which will long remain motionless, as much as twenty-three minutes, as I find 

 with Chrysomela spartiiP In seventeen different species which he observed, including 

 an lulus, a Spider, and Oniscus, "both poor and first-rate shammers," he found that 

 "iu no one instance was the attitude exactly the same, and iu several instances the atti- 

 tudes of the feigners and of the really dead were as unlike as they possibly could be." x 



Romanes, in his Mental Evolution in Animals, has treated the subject of feigning 

 death very fully, and has collected some very interesting facts. Two observations 

 upon the Crustacea are quoted, one of Bingley upon the "common crab, which, when 

 it apprehends danger, will lie as if dead, waiting for an opportunity to sink itself into 

 the sand, keeping only its eyes above it," and one by Preyer, who is said to have made 

 crayfish "stand upou their heads while in the hypnotic state"! Romanes agrees with 

 Preyer in attributing the shamming death in insects to "kataplexy," or mesmeric sleep 

 (in many cases the physiological effect of fear), but gives some remarkable cases among 

 vertebrates in Avhich it seems almost equally probable that there is intentional purpose 

 to deceive. 



The "shamming dead" in insects and Crustacea which leads simply to quiescence, 

 and thus to their becoming conspicuous in the presence of their enemies, had been 



'Chapter on Instinct written for The Origin of Species. See Appendix to Mental Evolution 

 in Animals, by George John Romanes, p. 364. 



