Insect Problems.

Waikato Times, Volume 107, Issue 17973, 19 March 1930, Page 15

Insect Problems.

THE ETERNAL MUSIC . PROBLEM—THE “SMELL” LANGUAGE OF BEES.

Why do insects make music all their lives? The chirp of crickets finds a weird significance in an analysis of insect harmony by Dr H. A Allard, U.S. Department of Agriculture, just issued in the annual report of the Smithsonian Instution. After long study of the musical lives of crickets and grasshoppers, Dr Allard is convinced that there is a reason more fundamental than the sex call which impels a snowy troe cricket to chirp 90 times a minute all night long, or nearly 4,000,000 times in the 60 days which constitute its lifo span, requiring 16,000,000 wing strokes. It is possible, Dr Allard says, that an elemental egotism and love of noisy selfexpression . may be the motives, or a mood of social contact or an elemental impulse of pure art. “Sex alone,” he insists, “does not explain it. No cricket needs to chirp himself to death, four or iivo million times on one bush to win the momentary attentions of a silent, lonely female in the vicinity. Hero is the weird mystery of insect music, its eternal persistence, and eternal wing play in some restless role of life designed, it would seem, to keep the insect happy and content while it lives along to the very threshold of death." While the insect is entirely an instrumentalist, Dr Allard points out, it actually has developed dialects in different localities, as do human beings. ihus there is an observable difference btween the musio of katykids (cicadas) of the same species in New England and in the district of Columbia. Belicata Hearing Sense. The icienfcist is confident they have a delicate sense of hearing. He once kept a bush katykid in his bedroom, and he says, “it would reply to my lisping mimicry as often as I cared to stimulate it. In tests with this katykid I stepped away slowly tho entire length of the room, lisping so low as barely to hear it myself, and yet it heard and promptly reresponded.” * The hearing organs, Dr Allard says, are- on the forelegs, near the knees. i . The eternal music of the insects, Dr Allard attributes to some inherent, pervasive mood that makes all things move and spin eternally in a round of restless play, whether it be electrons, planets, or what not in the physical universe. Borne families of insects, he points out, have quito complicated musical instruments as parts of their bodies, and different species are extremely specialised in their musical technique. Some appear to have a keen sense of time, while the musio of others seems to have no time regulation. (< Ambitious efforts to learn the smell language of bees, ants and termites are described by Dr N. E. Mclndoo, of the Department of Agriculture, who advances tho theory that the remarkable social organisations of these insects depend, for their systems of communication, upon tho extremelv fino differentiation of odours. Bv intensive development of his own sense of smell, Dr Mclndoo says he was able in a few months to distinguish queens, drones and workers merely by smelling them, and also to distinguish the smell of the hive, of the larvae, and pupae, of the honey, the pollen and the wax.

Family Odours. As a human being with greatly degenerated sense of smell could make suet fine distinctions, ho points out, the insects themselves must recognise much finer differences. By means of specially devised experiments, Dr Mclndoo reports, it was established that the queen bee gives a peculiar odour, that probably all bei offspring inherit a “family odour” from her, and that each worker apparently gives an odour different from that of any other worker. Of all the bee odours, he says, the “hive odour” probably is tho most important. All the bees of a colony carry this hive odour of that colony on their bodies. This serves as a sign by which all the occupants of a hive know one another. In colonies of ants, Dr Mclndoo points out, the utmost harmony reigns among those belonging to the same community, while all others are enemies. Thus ants taken out of a nest and returned aftei a year have been received amicably by tho others. On the other hand, a strange ant is at once attacked. . This indicates, he holds, that the differentiation of individuals must be by possession of odours peculiar to each colony. While the ability of dogs to follow tracks by scent long has amazed scientists, Dr Mclndoo points out the ant has equally remarkable ability in this line.

Tire odours of insects, lie believes, come from special glands, scattered over the surface of the body, which take the place of the sweat glands in mammals as smell producers. Among mammals, the dog has sweat glands in the pads of its feet which seem to deposit an odorous material xvherever the dog steps.