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5 A Killer in Action

Some days ago a friend and I were strolling along the Pelindaba hillside. It was a day of warm, bright sunshine. We were examining with magnifying-glasses the new work of the Eutermes termites, occasioned by the recent drenching showers. We strolled from one anthill to another and once, as we stood discussing some point of interest that had arisen in connection with the work we were doing, we simultaneously noticed a surreptitious movement in the grass about us. The hillside here consists of bare stony patches interspersed with clumps of young green grass. For several minutes it was indistinct and uncertain. It seemed as if the earth itself had suddenly become alive and manifested itself as a general gruesome crawling. I do not think it was exactly a relief when we realized that the movement was due to countless numbers of scorpions which had suddenly appeared from nowhere. It is no exaggeration to describe the apparition as sudden. A few minutes before we had not observed a single one; but within those few minutes the veld was simply alive with these terrible killers of the insect world. What was the cause of this extraordinary phenomenon?

We knew these hills were inhabited by vast numbers of this species of scorpion. Under every suitable stone one finds either a scorpion itself or the entrance to its labyrinthine underground fastness. Sometimes digging is dispensed with. It is these lazy ones which fall prey to baboons which industriously turn each likely-looking stone in search of the most highly prized of baboon luxuries. But we also knew that the scorpion is solitary and strictly nocturnal in its habits. This concerted emergence in broad daylight was a thing so remote from its known habits that it held us spellbound. Then I recollected that many years ago I had seen a very similar occurrence in another nocturnal creature of habits generally indentical with those of the scorpion. It was the giant cricket, that voracious killer and scavenger of Waterberg that had suddenly appeared in broad daylight in exactly this fashion, for no perceptible reason - at least for no reason that was immediately perceptible.

I could, therefore, form a guess at the cause of this extraordinary excitement; for that the scorpions were in a state of great excitement was clearly evident. It was exhibited chiefly by the manner in which the tails were whipped up and down. One moment they were raised high in the air, as a warrior raises his spear in challenge; the next they were flat against the ground, the insects suddenly assuming an attitude of crouching expectation. They swung round in half circles with the pincers widely extended. The slightest movement in its vicinity and the insect would rush in that direction. There were scorpions of all sorts and sizes; but big females appeared to predominate, perhaps because they

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are more numerous than the smaller male. The early and plentiful rains had speeded up their breeding considerably. We saw several females carrying their brood of babies on their backs, apparently not the least inconvenienced by their presence.

This reminds me that I have inadvertently spoken of the scorpion as an insect. There are many characteristics which prohibit such a classification. In propagation alone, it differs widely from insects and exhibits many of the higher psychological motivations of mammals. It does not lay eggs and leave the young to the chance of nature, the mother never seeing her offspring - as is the case with all solitary insects. The young of the scorpion are born alive, two at a time, up to twelve or sixteen at a birth. It does not go through the cycle of protean changes from grub to imago which is characteristic of all insects. The little scorpion is born perfect, except for size and colour. It is small and semitranslucent, but even its sting and poison-gland are ready and charged with venom at birth. Then, unlike all insects, the instinct of maternal love is highly developed in the scorpion. No lioness will fight for her cubs with more reckless daring than the scorpion mother does for her little ones. She guards their helplessness and feeds them even when she herself has to go hungry. The moment they are born she places them on her broad back where they sit in two rows with heads inward and tails interlocked. If, by chance, they are removed while still helpless she carefully and with extreme gentleness lifts each one with her pincers and replaces it on her back. Later on they climb up on their own accord. In the beginning she tears her captured prey into small bits and passes half-masticated portions to each of her babies in turn. These Southern Transvaal scorpions are not among the largest known species. They seldom exceed three inches in length from pincers to sting. The sting and poison-gland, on the other hand, are highly developed. It has the power - very much like our cobras - when greatly angered, of ejecting venom from its sting in an extremely fine jet, so fine that it is just visible to the naked eye. Children and old people have been known to die from the sting of a large scorpion. It will surprise no one to learn that these high psychological characteristics are accompanied by a degree of intelligence far more advanced than that of the general order of insects. Scorpions are easily tamed and seem to show a certain degree of affection for a human friend. At all events, they can be safely handled by anyone they have learnt to know.

The advent of the Pelindaba scorpions gave us an opportunity of observing peculiarities that I had never previously seen. We noticed that many of them appeared to be stained with blood. Under the magnifying-glass these stains proved to be ticks - large, pinkish-red sacs of fluid - miniature tampans. They were attached to the soft parts of the scorpions' body and in the joints of the legs. They did not seem to occasion any perceptible inconvenience to their

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hosts. I think they must be new to science. I have never seen them described before.

It was fully forty minutes before the mystery of the scorpions' appearance was explained. Over the southern hilltops a dense swarm of locusts came travelling in our direction. They settled at Pelindaba, dropping into the grass about our feet with glittering wings, and there was hardly a scorpion for whom a locust did not come to rest conveniently within reach. One would think that a locust, with its serrated spurs and deadly kick, would give the boldest scorpion pause. The contrary proved to be the fact. Once the locust was gripped by one of those huge pincers, all its struggles and kicks were unavailing. It was held at arms' length and then with slow and deadly deliberation it was passed from one claw to the other and gradually turned until the scorpion had it head-on and could pin it with both claws by the neck. Then the sting was brought over carefully and cautiously. Clearly the killer does not expose the delicate mechanism of its only weapon to the danger of violence. Slowly it touched point after point of the locust's body, feeling for a soft spot and there the sting was just as slowly inserted. Death was instantaneous. One convulsive jerk and the struggles and agony of the locust were ended. It reminded one strongly of Mr Beyers' wonderful cinematograph picture of a lioness killing a warthog. There was the same inexorable deliberation; the same long-drawn out struggle of the victim. Like the scorpion, the lioness never once released her hold. For half an hour the victim screamed and struggled with never the movement of a muscle by the killer. The only sign of life was a lazy opening and shutting of the eyes. In both instances nature was unveiled: red in tooth and claw. The tragedy is repeated a millionfold each night throughout this dark continent. The scorpion in action recalled vividly to one's memory the staging of the episode on a greater scale. The difference is in degree only; in method it is identical. One recalls a dark night in the drought; the fearful and trembling approach to the drinking-pool. Lips and throats are parched to silence by fear and thirst. The darkness pulsates with terror. Well do the helpless denizens of the wild know that the toll for water is death. The sudden alarm, the frenzied rush of terrified feet; a momentary silence and then the lonely cry of agony under the unheeding stars. What a picture of death, if one could remotely visualize the tremendous holocaust of a single night.

It is not necessary to visit any of the game ‘sanctuaries’ in order to experience nature in her most gruesome aspect. It takes place nightly in lesser degree in the grass at our feet.

In the end all thoughts were thrust aside by the mystery of the incident. How did the scorpions receive intelligence deep underground, under big stones, of the approach of the locusts nearly an hour before they were perceptible to us humans?

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My own theoretical explanation was arrived at more than twenty years ago, and I published the evidence on which it was based some ten years later. We enter the most mysterious and barely explored region of insect signals. I proved experimentally that all insect signals, which apparently consist of sound (such as the tapping of beetles) or perfume or some unknown ‘call’ such as that of the termite queen after her flight, are in reality some unknown ‘force’ which accompanies these audible or visible effects and which is beyond reach of man's sense organs. For many reasons I assumed this ‘force’ to consist of vibrations in the ether identical with the wireless waves set up by certain electrical conditions. I also proved that the ‘communal mind’, which preserves the entity of a swarm or group, consists of identical vibrations. It is of two kinds: one where the power is radiated from a central point as in the case of the termites, or where it is spread over all the individuals of the group as in the case of hornets and locusts. A writer in The Strand Magazine some years later carried this theory a step further. He showed that the ‘desire of the moth for the flame’ is due to the fact that the wave length of light is very near that of the vibration which constitutes the sexual signal of the moth, and the insect simply mistakes light for the ‘wireless’ call of its mate. I have since found that great many, if not all, insect signals are closely allied, so that they are frequently intercepted in error by the wrong species. If we apply this theory to the incident in question it comes down to this: the ether-vibrations which are broadcast by the locust swarm and which preserve it as a single entity and prevent its dispersal are very close to the natural sexual signal of the scorpion, so close in fact that the waves are intercepted by the scorpions far in advance of the advent of the swarm.