INSECT SAMSONS

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume XLI, Issue XLI, 10 September 1921, Page 4

INSECT SAMSONS

• . —♦—-_ ■ I STRONGEST OF CHEATED BEINGS.! I have just been watching a couple of "sexton" or burying beetles interring a defunct field mouse, writes a Daily Mail contributor. They had got about half-way through with the job when I first spotted them, and they finished the ,work in a little over a quarter of an hour. The feat, I should say., u'as equal to two men digging a grave for' a large elephant in half an hour. ' 1 Coming into the house I picked up ' my. Daily Mail and read an account of ; the feats of strength performed by those ; two redoubtable protagonists, Carpentier and Dempsey. Inevitably I began mentally to compare the relative strength of men and insects, with resultsvery much to the disadvantage of the former. 'Insects, indeed, in proportion to their size and weight, are infinitely • the .strongest of created be-

ings, ' . ;;,, A horse weighing fifteen htin<lied pounds can pull on the level a weight of two tons and a half. That is. a load roughly equal to. about five times jits own weight, for we must^ of course, allow for the weight of-the cart. Bu ( t a bee -can draw.'more than twenty * times- its own weight, a caterpillar has been shown to be capable of pulling twenty-five,times itrown weight, while a blowfly has been harnessed and found able to drag?more than one hundred and fifty times Its own tiny weight. In an experiment made with a small horn-beetle, weighing two grammes, tms^ insect was proved capable of alter-, nately raising and lowering a piece of stick weighing two hundred times as; much as itself. In order to rival such! a feat a man would have to lift a railway truck laden with about eight tons of coau. ' - *

Tn. feats of agility the insect is equally in advance of mankind. Several of the .smaller species of grasshoppers are ab|e to jump as much, as wo hundred t\me s their own length. Mans best effort i 3 about four times his own length.' To emulate the grasshopper he would have to clear a width of just under half a mile the man who could, jump like a grasshopper would be able to: cover the distance between Ludgate Circus and Trafalgar Square in a hop. skij), and a jump. .We adihiTe—and with good reason— the flight of such birds as the swallow and the swift. But watch"a dragon fly hawking over a pond, and you must feel that here is a much more marvellous performance. The "hover j fly" is possessed "of a speed even more' miraculous, for the eye cannot follow j its startling dashes through the air. I do not know' whether anyone has ever calculated the 'speed- of the "hover &y," but! should imagine that it must exceed that of any other living thiing. And the muscle power necessary tbdrive it at such speed anist be truly" amazing. "in the: matter;*of architecture a"nd engmeering, -insects are as far ahead of man;- 'as -theyr are hi museiilar strength;-,: The-termite or white ant raises: its hills to a height of fifteen • feet, and^iohstruefs them so -strongly that even a, heavy iljeast like the buffalo can stand on them without break-ing-them down.

The Pyramid of-Cheops is but ninety times the height of a man. but these anthills are more than six hundred times the height of their tiny builders