Part 8

“This gigantic worm is from thirty to forty feet long, brown or violet, and shining as varnished leather. It lurks under stones and in hollows of rocks where it may be met with, rolled into a ball and coiled in a thousand seemingly inextricable knots which it is incessantly loosening and tightening by contraction of its muscles. The animal is nourished by sucking a kind of small oyster which attaches itself to various substances under water. When it has exhausted the food around, it extends its long, dark-colored, riband-like body, which is terminated by a head bearing some likeness to the head of a serpent. It pauses gently, moves from side to side as if endeavoring to investigate the ground, and finally succeeds in finding a stone to suit its purposes about fifteen to twenty feet from its former retreat. It then begins to unwind its coil and arrange itself in a new domicile. In proportion as one knot is loosened, another forms at the opposite extremity.”

A report of the Gatty Marine Laboratory of St. Andrews University in Scotland tells of the species Cerebratulus angulatus, which was mistaken for a fish. “But when the fisherman stretched out his hand net to capture it, instantly to his astonishment it shot out to more than a yard long. In the laboratory it swam with undulatory up-and-down movements, as an eel swims laterally.”

The nemertinea are a progressive race. Some have invaded the deep sea and some the dry land. They have been obtained from depths of more than 6,000 feet. The deep-sea species have undergone peculiar adaptations for a life of swimming slowly or floating idly at whatever depths they have chosen for their habitat. They have lost their eyes and their brains are quite rudimentary compared with those of their land or shallow-water relatives. All have increased greatly the amount of gelatinous tissue between the internal organs, so that they have a low specific gravity. The deep-sea forms thus far collected are broad and flat. Some have taken on the appearance of small fish with outgrowths on the sides of the body which resemble fins, and with the rear end flattened like a fish’s tail. Some have developed tentacles around their mouths.

Most of the ribbon worms of the open sea are nearly transparent. Some, however, are among the most brilliantly colored of the nemertinea race, with coat patterns of yellow, orange, red, and scarlet. Most of these creatures are small, measuring only a fraction of an inch in length. The largest is about six inches long—thus, as one biologist points out, comparing to the smallest like an ox to a mouse. These pelagic species are found in all the oceans. They are carried around the world by deep-sea currents.

About twelve species have abandoned the shore for dry land where they lead active lives and seem to have become almost independent of water. They cannot, however, endure being completely dried out. They do not make their own burrows, but in periods of drought, it is believed, they make use of earthworm burrows. Some have been found under the dead, damp bark of tropical trees. Their chief food consists of earthworms.

_Winged Reptile_

The largest flying animal the world has known was a winged reptile, the pterodactyl, of a hundred million years ago. It had a wing spread of more than twenty feet, supporting in the air a body which would hardly have weighed more than thirty pounds. Its head was nearly four feet long with a dagger-like, narrow, pointed toothless beak. It lived around the ancient sea which once extended northwestward from the present Gulf of Mexico through most of Kansas. Presumably it lived entirely on fish and made long, gliding flights over the water.

The structure of this reptile, insofar as it could be realized from fragmentary fossil bones, was studied carefully by Dr. Samuel P. Langley while he was at work on early models of his airplane. Did the pterodactyl, Dr. Langley asked in a somewhat pessimistic progress report, represent the best Nature could do in the way of flight? Could man hope to do better than Nature?

_Vicious Fire Ants_

One of the most vicious of insects is the fire ant of South America—a small red ant whose sting burns like the point of a red hot pin pushed into the skin. Hordes of these creatures have forced the populace to abandon Brazilian towns. The soil of a village can be completely undermined by the ants. The ground is thoroughly perforated by the entrances to their subterranean galleries.

“The houses are overrun by them,” says Edward Bates in _A Naturalist on the Amazon_. “They dispute every fragment of food with the inhabitants and destroy clothing for the sake of the starch. All eatables must be suspended from rafters in baskets, with the cords well soaked in balsam, the only known means of preventing the ants from climbing. They seem to attack persons out of sheer malice. If we stood for a few hours in the street, even at a distance from their nests, we were sure to be overrun and severely punished. The moment an ant touched the flesh he secured himself with his jaws, doubled his tail, and stung with all his might.”

_The Architectural Genius of Birds_

Birds rival ants and termites as architects. One species builds nests as big as small human dwellings—as much as 25 feet long, 15 feet wide and ten feet high. This is the sociable weaver bird of the desert western areas of South Africa. Such an apartment house, woven out of sticks and straw, may contain as many as 95 individual nests. It is the community product of a flock of from 75 to 100 pairs. The sheer bulk of the nesting material gathered is striking evidence of the impelling year-round urge of the building instinct.

This bird, says Dr. Herbert Friedmann, Curator of Birds at the Smithsonian Institution, “is about as sociable as any bird could possibly be. It is always found in flocks, feeds in flocks, and breeds in the large, many-apartmented compound nests. With this extreme socialibility and sedentary habit of life the territorial relations of the species have been modified in a way that is quite remarkable, perhaps unique, among birds. Instead of each pair having its own breeding territory, each flock seems to have a definite territory whose boundaries are seldom crossed by individuals of other flocks.

“In an area of approximately 1,000 square miles I found only 26 nests. The flocks ordinarily do not live in very close juxtaposition to each other. The nests are so large, so conspicuous at great distances, and the trees so relatively few in number that I am quite certain I found practically every nest in the area.”

In spite of the highly developed communal life, Dr. Friedmann notes, there appears to have been no break-down of the family. Whether each male has one or several mates, however, is unknown. In the construction of the apartments there is some evidence that each family builds its own individual nest, while the whole flock cooperates in constructing a roof over the whole. The structures often become so heavy eventually that they crash to the ground and all the work must be done over.

Woodpeckers that carve “apartment houses” out of hardwood tree trunks have been observed by Dr. Alexander Wetmore in the dark, rain-drenched forests of the La Hotte mountains in Haiti. On one occasion he was astonished to find a dozen pairs going in and out of nests in a single dead tree trunk standing in an open space, the holes being from three to ten meters from the ground and in some cases less than a meter apart. There was no question that the woodpeckers were colonizing, as the trunk was a veritable apartment house with the birds climbing actively over its surface and flying back and forth to the nearby woodland.

In the same mountains Dr. Wetmore found another apartment builder, the palm chit-chat. It is a gregarious species that lives in small bands, each being made up of several pairs having a communal nest as the center of its activities. The largest bands frequenting a single nest do not appear to contain more than 20 birds.

The nests are constructed of twigs about the size of a pencil and from ten to 17 inches in length. The bird itself is only seven or eight inches long. Yet it is able to carry these heavy “timbers” 30 or 40 feet from the ground. One of the nests examined was about the size of a bushel basket and evidently was occupied by only a few pairs. There was a roughly defined central tunnel four to five inches in diameter leading through the mass of sticks and opening to the outside at either end. Near each end was a slight accumulation of bark that made a little platform.

The “apartments” opened from the tunnel on each side. There was a central chamber, supposedly a community room, about five inches in diameter, its floor carpeted with fine shreds of bark. Each nest was a separate unit, with its own door to the outside. There were, however, roughly defined passages running through the interlacing twigs at the top of the nests that permitted the birds to creep about under cover.

One of the most intricate of all bird nests is that of the South African penuline titmouse, distantly related to the American chickadees. It is made of a wool-like plant fiber, very intricately and delicately woven. The form is that of a small bag hanging from a thorn bush. It has one visible opening, a false one which leads nowhere and apparently is intended entirely as camouflage. The real entrance is skillfully hidden, its location known only to the builder. When the mother bird enters the nest she lifts a concealed flap, slips through, and closes it behind her. She again closes it just as carefully when she leaves the nest. There is not the slightest indication on the surface of the finely woven fiber of the existence of the flap.

The Ceylon tailor bird, orthotomus sutorius, makes its nest by actually sewing large leaves together in the shape of a horn, using its bill as a needle. As described by the British naturalist A. G. Pinto: “The first thing she did was to make with her sharp little beak a number of punctures along each edge of the leaf. Having thus prepared the leaf, she disappeared for a little and returned with a strand of cobweb. One end of this she wound around the narrow part of the leaf that separated one of the punctures from the edge. Having done this she carried the loose end of the strand across the under surface of the leaf to a puncture on the opposite side where she attached it to the leaf, and thus drew the two edges a little way together. She then proceeded to connect most of the other punctures with those opposite them, so that the leaf took the form of a tunnel converging to a point. The under surface of the leaf formed the roof and sides of the tunnel. There was no floor to this, since the edges of the leaf did not meet below, the gap between them being bridged by strands of cobweb.

“When lining the nest the bird made a number of punctures in the body of the leaf, through which she poked the lining with her beak, the object being to keep it in situ. All this time the margins of the leaf that formed the nest had been held together by the thinnest strands of cobweb, and it is a mystery how they could have stood the strain. However, before the lining was completed the bird proceeded to strengthen them by connecting the punctures on opposite edges of the leaf with threads of cotton. She would push one end of a thread through a puncture. The cotton used is soft and frays easily so that the part of it forced through a tiny aperture issues as a fluffy knob, which looks like a knot and usually is taken as such. As a matter of fact, the bird makes no knots. She merely forces a portion of the cotton strand through a puncture and the silicon in the leaf catches the strands and prevents them from slipping. Sometimes the cotton threads are long enough to admit of their being passed to and fro, in which case the bird uses the full length.”

The leaves are not killed by the tailoring process and remain green. Hence the nest is almost impossible to detect.

_The Ferocious Leech Worms_

Armies of billions of ferocious worms defended and preserved a fabulous 1,000-year-old Arabian Nights kingdom for three centuries. This kingdom was templed Kandy in the center of Ceylon, encircled by low, densely forested mountains. It was the site of one of the most picturesque ancient civilizations of the Orient which had degenerated into a brutal despotism when the first European invaders, the Portuguese, came to the island early in the sixteenth century.

Armed with arquebuses, the white man established missions and trading posts on the coast with little difficulty, but the forested mountains proved impassable. The Portuguese soldiers were hard put to pitch their camps in deep jungle bush and in bug-filled marshes. Grass and bushes swarmed with little green worms—extremely nimble creatures about an inch long which subsisted on the blood of warm-blooded animals. They seemed to prefer human blood. They attacked the soldiers night and day. Clothes were no protection. The worms dropped in streams of blood from eyelids and ears. They swarmed on all sides in ever-increasing numbers as the invading forces penetrated further into the jungle. With no defense against this unanticipated enemy, the Europeans were forced to retreat long before the temples of Kandy were in sight. They made no further effort to conquer the ancient kingdom.

The Dutchmen who followed the Portuguese were content to remain in their barricaded coastal trading posts. A century later came the British East India Company with a small army of Sepoys commanded by British officers. The ruler of Kandy, quite secure within his green-worm defenses, was Raja Sinha, one of the cruelest of Oriental despots. He spurned all overtures at negotiation with officers of the trading company.

Once again his kingdom was invaded. During the march into the mountains the Sepoy soldiers suffered so badly from the attacks of the worms that some died and many others deserted. The force was so badly depleted that further advance became impossible. Only when British regulars took over the invasion years later was an armed force of white men able to reach Kandy. Previously only individuals, chiefly Portuguese Franciscans, had been able to cross the terrible green-worm barrier.

Sir Emerson Tennent, British historian of Ceylon, describes these worms as normally about an inch long, slender as needles, and able to stretch their bodies to double the ordinary length. Ceylonese natives had been able to protect themselves to some extent by smearing their bodies with lemon juice and tobacco ashes.

“On descrying the prey,” says Tennent, “they advance rapidly by semi-circular strides, fixing one end firmly and arching the other forward until by successive advances they can lay hold of the traveller’s foot, when they disengage from the ground and ascend his dress in search of an aperture. The wound they make is so skillfully punctured that the first intimation is the trickling of blood or the chill feeling of the worm as it begins to land heavily on the skin.”

These worms, hirudinae or leeches, are remotely related to earthworms with a quite similar internal structure, but highly specialized for an exclusive diet of warm blood which they take from any mammal that comes within reach. The blood-sucking species—not all species are this type—have triangular mouths with extremely sharp chitinous [of the same material as the shells of insects] teeth. The bite, so rapidly and skillfully administered that it seldom is felt, has been described as resembling the movement of a circular saw. Haemadipoa, the Ceylon species, described by Tennent, reportedly has five pairs of keen eyes and as many as 100 body segments. All the blood eaters have two suckers, one on the front and one on the rear of the body, by means of which they cling to their victims. All have the ability to contract the body to a plump, pear-like form and extend it to a wormlike form.

The green worms are as much of a terror as ever to travelers in Asian jungles. A species akin to that of the Kandy defense armies guards the thickly forested approaches to the Himalayas in Nepal It is described by Dr. George Moore, chief of the United Nations medical mission to Nepal:

“These leeches, little segmented worms about two inches long, were particularly provoking and troublesome until our team reached an altitude of 14,000 feet. Along the trails, on each ledge leading to the pass, leeches would lie in the shade and moisture until nearby footsteps vibrated their sense organs. Then they would inch from rock to rock at incredible speed, traveling their entire length toward the sound in about a second and then stopping to perch on the rock with their front ends sticking in the air. Immediately they touched a human body they would fasten themselves to it and search for warm skin. Often they would drop from trees. They could penetrate eyelets of shoes and pores of socks by lengthening the entire body. Huge clots of blood would be found on the skin where the greedy worms had fattened themselves to a fragile bursting point.”

The leech encountered by Dr. Moore’s mission long has been notorious as one of the most vicious animals on earth. It has made some areas of the Himalayan foothills uninhabitable. Travelers and hunters are terrified by it. It exists in incalculable numbers and attacks at least all warm-blooded animals. Horses are driven wild. Cattle and dogs sometimes are blinded and the young and sick killed. It has been known to attack the deadly cobra, striking at the eyes and blinding the reptiles. The respect in which it is held in indicated by its zoological name montivindictus, or “defender of the mountains.”

Its stronghold is the highly humid zone at the foot of the Himalayas between altitudes of 4,000 and 6,000 feet. Its period of activity occurs during the rainy season, when it can move freely without danger of drying out. At other times it seldom is seen except at night when grass and bushes are wet with dew.

The worm lurks at the bases of plants. It is stirred to action by the slightest movement of stems or vibration caused by footfalls. An inherent impulse, or geotropism, then impels it to climb any plant or vertical object with which it happens to be in contact. At the top it extends its body horizontally and probes the surroundings.

Once a victim is found, the hungry worm seeks a thin patch of skin richly supplied with blood capillaries. There it attaches itself by means of the cup-like sucker at the front end of its body. Immediately behind this cup are three radiating ridges, or jaws, each provided with about 70 sharp teeth. With these three rows of teeth it cuts three duplicate slits on the skin, meeting at a common center. From the star-shaped wound the warm blood is sucked. Meanwhile from its own glands the leech secretes hirudin, a substance which prevents blood coagulation, and also some as yet unknown substance which preserves blood. The blood is pumped into a storage tank in the leech’s stomach. At a single feeding the animal can store up as much as three-fold its own weight. Then it can live as long as three months without another meal.

_The Complex Spider’s Web_

A single strand of a spider’s web may consist of several thousand separate filaments. On the creature’s abdomen are four to six teat-like organs. Each secretes through several hundred extremely minute tubes a viscous fluid which hardens immediately when exposed to air. The spider attaches its abdomen to some solid object and pulls out the threads by moving its body forward. The hind feet are used to bring the hundreds of filaments into a single thread.

_Monsters of the Deep: The Great Squids_

Giants of the mollusk family and about the most loathsomely fantastic creatures on earth are the great squids. One may weigh as much as half a ton. The largest known specimen, a replica of which is among the Smithsonian Institution exhibits, was 55 feet long. It had ten arms, two of them approximately 35 feet long and two-and-a-half inches in diameter. Its eye measured seven by nine inches. Many strange sea serpent stories have been told by persons who merely saw a writhing arm of one of these creatures on the surface. In recent years, however, there has been no reliable report of an encounter with such an animal and it may be close to extinction. Normally it is a denizen of profound depths and darkness and presumably shuns light. It is associated chiefly with the North Atlantic, especially around Newfoundland.

There are not more than a dozen entirely authenticated accounts of seeing the monster. Just after the middle of the last century, Rev. Mr. Harvey of St. Johns, Newfoundland, began to gather “sea devil” reports from fishermen and these constitute a substantial portion of the literature on the subject. He reported that in 1874 two St. Johns fishermen in an open boat observed an object floating in the water which they thought to be wreckage: “When they approached it reared its parrot-like beak, big as a six-gallon keg with which it struck the bottom of the boat violently. It then shot out from around its head two huge, livid arms and began to entwine them around the boat. One of the men seized an axe and cut off both arms as they lay over the gunwale, whereupon the creature moved off and ejected an immense quantity of inky fluid which darkened the water for two or three hundred yards.

“Early in the morning of November 21, 1877,” Harvey informed Prof. Addison E. Verrill of Yale, “a big squid was seen on the beach at Trinity Bay, still alive and struggling desperately to escape. It had been carried in by the tide and a high inshore wind. In its struggles to get off it ploughed a trench or furrow 30 feet long and of considerable depth by the stream of water which it ejected with great force from its syphon. When the tide receded it died. The body was eleven feet long, with tentacle arms 33 feet long. The shorter arms were about eleven feet long.”

“In 1878,” Harvey reported, “Stephen Sherring, a fisherman residing in Thimble Tickle, was out in a boat with two other men. Not far from shore they observed some bulky object and supposing it might be part of a wreck they moved towards it. To their horror they found themselves close to a huge fish with large, glassy eyes, which was making desperate efforts to escape and churning the water into foam by the motions of its immense arms and tail. It was aground and the tide was ebbing.