Sex and the Single Entomologist
by Philip Johns
Things Too
Fierce to Mention:
That Which Is (Not) a Bug
by Philip Johns
Some things just ain't right. Near us, much nearer than most of us would like, is a menagerie of things that creep and crawl, flop and twitch, a Hieronymus Bosch-scape, a carnival sideshow. One of my favorite words is herpetology, the study of reptiles, but deriving from the Greek herpetos more literally the study of things that crawl on their bellies. This brings to mind an old tune by the Coasters ("She walks, she talks, she crawls on her belly like a reptile ..."). Among the initiated, the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists is known as "Ichs and Herps." Icks and herps, indeed.
I am not a herpetologist; I study bugs. Which includes what? Anything spineless and annoying? Anything with jointed legs? Any insect? Here's how it breaks down: There are things with exoskeletons and lots of jointed legs (Phylum Arthropoda), and some folks would call the ones on land "bugs". Among these animals is a group with only six legs, three major body segments, single pair of antennae, and a few other features that make them real insects (Class Insecta). A lot of people would call these "bugs". The reason entomologists are sometimes loose with the word "bug" is that within insects is a group of "true bugs" (Order Hemiptera, Suborder Heteroptera), things with semi-scleritized wings ("hemelytra") and sucking mouthparts. On top of that, some very popular texts use an older taxonomy with different terminology, and everyone in the know is familiar with the older terms. And for arcane reasons, spider people often publish in entomological journals.
Mostly, I don't care. To bring up the etymology of entomology every time someone points to a creepy-crawly would be pedantic. Lord knows I hate being pedantic. So some bugfolk use "bug" more loosely in casual conversation than your average third-grader. (When a centipede runs through the kitchen, a friend's nine year old will squeal, "eeww, a Myriapod.") Microbiologists call things in their petri dishes bugs, and I say: solidarity, brother. I have spiders and scorpions in my personal bestiary, and in my eyes they are all bugs. At least in casual conversation.
Recently I led a group of students, my happy few, on a trip to Puerto Rico to see bugs. Here I mean insects: six legs, three major bodily divisions, the works. In the wet forest at El Yunque National Park we enjoyed pleasant damp weather as we wandered and netted and captured and photographed and vialed-and occasionally reviled-umpteen bugs, all in a misguided attempt to learn entomology. What my students learned was: don't ride anywhere in my van, and expect to get lost. I'm good at getting lost.
One night my students and I went to see something that was, only in the broadest definition, a bug. This animal was supposed to make a nightly appearance at the base of a very large rock. Without telling them where we were headed, I marched my students, headlamps bobbing, up a muddy rainforest trail and promptly forgot which rock hid the predictable beast.
Undeterred, I continued marching up the mountain, hoping my students wouldn't guess what had happened. We crossed, one at a time, dark and rushing waters on a cable bridge. On the other side was a bigger rock that I knew often hid cool nocturnal bugs-the six-legged kind (but not "true" bugs). Not what I wanted to show my people, but better than admitting defeat. I urged my students to shine their lights under the car-size boulder and look for antennae and legs. No antennae or legs displayed themselves. Another Johns boondoggle. My de facto TA, Lucy, generously offered to crawl under the rock.
"Sure, go ahead," I said.
"Will it help?" She sounded dubious.
"Can't hurt." I was just as dubious.
"Will I get hurt?"
"I don't see how."
"No, I mean, will anything bad happen to me?" Lucy was as exasperated as her Peanuts namesake. "Is there anything poisonous or dangerous under the rock?"
"It's Puerto Rico," I said. "There's nothing dangerous here."
And Lucy prepared to do her own Little Egypt impression, squatting on her hands and knees. Someone's flashlight beam passed just above her forehead, a few inches from the boulder. "What's that?"
It took a moment for us to register what clung to the boulder inches above Lucy's noggin. A palpable wave of revulsion washed over my group. The beast that I had hoped to see was there, in full glory, eating a frog. This particular amblypygid was not just big. It was huge. The frog that hung in its jaws was three inches long, maybe a little longer. Our eyes followed creature's second pair of legs from end to end: more than fourteen inches across, and they were not fully spread.
"Lucy. Don't. Stand. Up," someone advised. (Lucy, an EMT and the epitome of self-confidence, later suggested that she would have had a seizure if this beast had crawled on her.)
More closely related to spiders and scorpions than insects, amblypygids are in the Class Arachnida. Among the things that differentiates them from insects are a superfluity of legs and a "cephalothorax" (= head + thorax) rather than two distinct body regions in front of the abdomen. Sometimes called tailless whip scorpions or whip spiders, these ten-legged beasties use their serrated appendages to catch and then, out of just plain meanness, tear their prey apart. (That isn't quite accurate; amblypigids suck their prey's guts out, too.) I do not know why amblypygids in Puerto Rico are so big, but I suspect it has to do with the lack of mammalian predators. Whip spiders are the tigers of the island rainforest. And they are large.
Given that this is a column about sex, I should mention the mating practices of these fair creatures. Here's what's cool: Males provide sperm on little lollypop apparatuses called spermatophores. These packages o' love are not at all unique among arthropods, but whip spiders, scorpions, and pseudoscorpions (tiny, mite-size things without stingers) provide them on little springy stalks. Males deposit them on the ground, then maneuver females to walk over the spermatophores, where - sproing! - the spermatophores' contents release into the females' genital openings.
Most female arthropods are bigger than males, and male scorpions run some risk of becoming lunch. When wooing a female, the first thing male scorpions and pseudoscorpions do is grab the females' pinchers to keep from getting, well, pinched. And then they dance. No, I'm not kidding; the technical term for this phase of scorpion courtship is the pas de deux. And then they "kiss." The kiss is a phase in which male and female lock mouthparts, and it has more to do with making sure the female is in the right place than with affection. Amblypygids are the coy boys of the arachnid world; they turn away from their intended as they deposit each spermatophore and they don't dance.
Not all scorpion biologists are thrilled with terms such as kiss and pas de deux. ("Thrilling", by the way, is another behavior male scorpions use to woo females.) Me, I like words. And the fact that entomologists and arachnologists, beetle-browed and poking their collective proboscis among the dried and pinned and alcohol bound, find romance and poetry in the scuttling of scorpions and their ilk never fails to make me smile.
Lucy and the rest of my crew stared in awe at the spectacle. We took pictures until I accidentally brushed against the whip spiders longest pair of legs. The amblypygid quickly took its midnight snack elsewhere. A mentor of mine once quipped that the only entomology news to reach the general public is "Bug Eats Frog". He'll be disappointed to see me perpetuate this trend. I think bugs are beautiful, things to be admired and painted and cooed over. More poetry should be written about bugs. But not all arthropods, not always. Seeing the amblypygid eating a frog, this nightmare creature from the darkest Caribbean jungle, I remembered Cormac McCarthy's line about vaporous beings in regions beyond right knowing where the eye wanders and the lip jerks and drools. As it went, limp frog dangling from its maw, I could only think that some things just ain't right.
A popular text on finding, catching, and rearing scorpions
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