250 
FOREST AND STREAM 
May, 1920 
INSECTS WHICH BLUFF— AND SNAKES 
CERTAIN SPECIES GAIN AN ADVANTAGE BY PRETENDING TO BE WHAT 
THEY ARE NOT AND THUS ESCAPE THE NOTICE OF THEIR MANY ENEMIES 
1 STARTED to write an article on in- 
sects — the snakes were subsequently 
drawn into the argument, as a consid- 
eration of them seems to throw some light 
on the questions discussed. All harmless 
snakes share whatever respect, or im- 
munity from attack, is accorded to veno- 
mous ones. Some harmless snakes are 
very like some venomous ones, others are 
not. Yet, scarcely anyone, except a Na- 
turalist, troubles to distinguish deadly 
from innocuous, certainly most natives 
do not and it is hardly likely that the bulk 
of the animal kingdom is more discerning 
— except those few cteatures which, like 
the mongoose and secretary bird, are ac- 
customed to eat them. Mankind might 
be regarded as having an instinctive fear 
for all snakes, whether poisonous, or non- 
poisonous, and of everything which is of 
snake-like appearance. 
What is it that makes man fail to dis- 
tinguish between nocuous and innocuous? 
It is partly the similarity and partly an 
instinct that the whole class is danger- 
ous. In fact the harmless snake puts up 
a bluff that it is harmful and the bluff 
generally works. Some go farther, they 
assume threatening attitudes, as if about 
to strike — for instance, the Indian rat 
snake will do this and has often been 
mistaken for a cobra. This bluff is not 
always to the advantage of the non- 
poisonous snake as, given an opportunity, 
man will kill it as surely and conscienti- 
ously as if it were venomous. The pois- 
onous snake, however, does derive some 
benefit from the fear it inspires, a bene- 
fit the harmless one shares with it, and, 
before the advent of man with his walk- 
ing stick, the advantage of being mis- 
taken for a dangerous species must have 
been considerable. Snakes are often 
sluggish creatures, especially when 
changing their skins, they have a habit 
of lying about in pathways and game 
tracks and do not trouble to move out of 
the way. They would often be trampled 
on by passing herds of game were it not 
for the very lively fear they inspire. 
The respect given to the harmless 
snake is dependent on there being harm- 
ful ones, if there were no dangerous 
snakes, and never had been, there would 
be no respect for the class, or instinct to 
avoid them, however well they pretended 
to bite and strike. Now the points I 
wished to make by the introduction of 
snakes were, firstly; the instinctive fear 
they inspire, whether harmless or deadly, 
an instinct the consideration of which 
may help us to understand the attitude 
By MAJOR C. H. ST1GAND 
of other creatures towards other classes 
of supposedly harmful things; secondly, 
that the bluffer must be sufficiently like 
something which is actually offensive, 
dangerous or disagreeable, or else belong 
to the same class, otherwise the bluff 
would not hold. If we meet with some- 
thing which puts up a bluff at stinging 
and know that it is perfectly harmless 
we can feel fairly certain that some mem- 
ber of its class, or something of which it 
is a fairly good imitation, actually can 
sting. There are, in point of fact, two 
classes of bluffers, one which relies on its 
Courtesy of American Museum of Natural History 
American “monarch” (upper) and “vice- 
roy” (lower) butterflies, model and 
mimic 
relationship with something harmful, al- 
though it may not itself be very like its 
relation; the other which relies on close 
resemblance — or mimicry, as it is called 
— to something harmful, although it may 
have little or no relationship with the 
object mimicked. 
It is only amongst the first class that I 
have noticed harmless creatures go 
through the threatening motions of sting- 
ing or attacking, a circumstance which 
makes one imagine that either it, or its 
distant progenitors, at one time actually 
had the power of stinging. For this rea- 
son it is quite natural for it to go through 
these motions. 
In England sometimes when one lifts 
up a stone one sees come forth a fearsome 
object, the Devil’s coach horse ( Ocypus 
olens), turning up its tail in the most 
threatening way. It makes no attempt 
at flight, but menaces you with its up- 
turned tail as if it were confident it could 
sting you out of existence. This is a pure 
piece of bluff as this beetle cannot sting. 
When one goes to the tropics one finTs 
miniature members of these StaphylinidEe 
which really do sting, giving a small 
prick and tingle much like the sting of 
the flying ant. These insects are not like 
the English one, except in structure, and 
general family resemblance. The sting- 
ing ones I have met with are very small, 
under a quarter of an inch in length and 
some of them brightly colored in red and 
green bands. They are accustomed to 
fly and are attracted at night by light. 
The English and harmless one is very 
much larger and of a uniform brown 
color. 
T O turn now to the mimics — there are 
numbers of day flying moths which 
resemble hymenoptera (bees and 
wasps). There is a tropical family, allied 
to the Burnett moths, in which the body 
is banded with bright colors and the 
wings are more or less transparent, close- 
ly resembling hornets; there are the 
clear- wings and the bee-hawk moths. All' 
these hover over flowers, settle on blos- 
soms or pass from flower to flower in 
much the same way as bees and wasps. 
Some of these tropical Burnetts I have 
taken care to examine very closely be- 
fore trusting, a finger near the stinging 
end. and I think that most people inex- 
perienced in entomology would be unwill- 
ing to take hold of a bee hawk. 
Amongst the Diptera there is the fam- 
ily of Hover flies ( Syrphidae ) many of 
which closely resemble hymenoptera. The 
common English Syrphus is colored al- 
most exactly like the common English 
wasp, but the shape of the body and its 
method of flight is so different that it can 
be recognized in an instant. It is smaller 
than the wasp and has only two full- 
sized wings in place of the former’s four. 
Now in the above instances it is notice- 
able that those which belong to a sting- 
ing class, as the Staphylinidae, may be 
considerably unlike those members of 
their class with stings. On the other 
hand those which belong to a different 
order from the insect they mimic, as the 
moths and hover flies, very closely re- 
semble, at least in coloration, the stinging 
I 
