NATURE NOTES

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21912, 22 September 1934, Page 1 (Supplement)

NATURE NOTES

THE POISONERS

BY J. DBUSTMOND, F.L.S., F.Z.S.

Comparatively few snakes are poisonous, but poisonous snakes are the most poisonous creatures in the world. Their poison, in its action, is terribly powerful and sudden. They are equipped, according to a student of their ways, with an absolutely devilish contrivance, which ensures the entrance of the poison into the deepest part of a wound. In the absence of snakes, spiders are the most notorious poisoners in New Zealand. The katipo, handsome and attractive, heads the list with a reputation rivalling that of the tarantula, which is said to be not as black as it is painted. Investigators are puzzled by authentic reports of severe suffering, even of death, from spiders' bites, and by statements that people have allowed themselves to be bitten by members fef the same species without experiencing inconvenience. The explanation seems to bo that a spider controls its poison, giving large doses when it is very angry.

There are more poisonous insects than might be generally thought. Wasps and bees, with their reservoirs of acids and alkalines, are dreaded less than spiders, but are equally well known. Snakes and spiders have poison-fangs. An insect may eject poison through its sting. This often is a development of the ovipositor, the egg-laying instrument, and is possessed by females only. Some species of water-bugs have two bags in the head filled with poison sufficiently powerful to kill small insects on which the water-bugs feed. Poison is ants' most formidable weapon. _ There is much to admire in their social life. Warfare between different species of them, in which poison is freely used, is licrce and relentless. This phase of their life so shocked their greatest historian, Dr. A. Forel, that he compared it with " our own wretched human society."

Even in the caterpillar stage, when mentality is low and when almost all consideration is given to the next meal, some, insects are poisonous. There are caterpillars that sting like a nettle, but the effect is much more lasting. Others secrete a fluid that contains 40 per cent of formic acid, and produce from their bodies an appliance with which to squirt it on enemies. No other creatures are known to secrete fluids containing anything like the same percentage of acid. Bombardier beetles defended themselves with poison-gas ages before it was introduced into human warfare. With an explosion that can be heard distinctly, - they secrete a substance that immediately becomes a kind of gas. They are plentiful in the Old Country and in Australia, but are absent from New Zealand. Members of another bomdardier family, which noisily fire out clouds of blue smoke, are ants' guests. They often kill the ants' enemies. A theory that they are kept by ants as batteries of artillery, like a foreign legion, is not supported. These beetles never turn their guns on the ants, which sometimes maltreat them.

Empty round shells about three inches in diameter, embossed in regular pattern, washed up in hundreds on New Zealand shores, are unoccupied dwellings of sea-urchins. When a seaurchin is at home, it covers the outside with large spines, fixed to the shell by ball-and-socket joints. Among these spines are minute spines. Each has three poison-blades. They snap like the blades of a scissors, and each Bnap forces out poison stored at the bases of the blades. An inquisitive sea-worm that annoyed a sea-urchin in an aquarium was snapped by three blades. Three drops of red poison entered its body. Before it knew what had happened it became paralysed. In a few minutes it ceased to take an interest in seaurchins or anything else. No allegations have been made against a species of scorpion-fish in New Zealand waters. If it is like other scorpion-fishes, it has poison-spines on its back.

Jelly-fishes are called Medusa because trailing tentacles that fringe their bells resemble horrid writhing serpents that clustered around Medusa's head. "Whiplashes in the tentacles are as poisonous as the mythical ringlets. The poison is used mainly against small creatures eaten by jelly-fishes. A pipe-fish, swimming close to a large jelly-fish, brushed against several tentacles. Batteries fired poison into the pipe-fish. As the terrified fish struggled, more tentacles clasped it and more poison was ejected. The fish ceased to struggle. It was enveloped in tentacles, and was drawn up to the jelly-fish's mouth. The Portuguese man-o'-war is the most beautiful jelly-fish and the most poisonous. A bather stung by a Portuguese man-o'-war suffered aching pains, a high temperature, numbness and oppressed breathing.

Some New Zealand lizards, when handled, try to bite, but their teeth are too delicate to make any impression on the skin of a person's finger. The world has only one poisonous lizard, the Gila Monster of Mexico and Arizona, two feet long. This reptile has little to learn from snakes in regard to poison. Several human beings have died from itse poisonous bite. Many have suffered much pain.

An ordinary frog may have a little weak poison. The deadly poison of a tree-frog in South America is used for poisoning arrow-heads. The frogs' close connection, the toads, reek with poison. A belief that they spat poison, and that it hung on their bodies, died hard after it had brought them into lothing. This was in Shakespeare's mind when he made Lady Ann spit at Richard the Third and express a hope that it would poison him. He said: "Never came poison from so sweet a place." Lady Ann replied: " Never hung poison on a fouler toad."

Mr. C. Buchanan, Victoria Road, Dcvonport, says that when he was a boy on Great Mercury Island he was awakened at 2 a.m. one day by his mother, who called for a light and said that something had bitten her foot. A candle that he hurriedly took in disclosed a largo centipede. _As it ran down the valance toward his bare feet he was so excited that he set fire to tho mosquito net, which flared toward the calico ceiling, but was torn down before the ceiling went ablaze. The wound made by the centipede was very painful and caused a swelling and a blueness like a bruise. The patient was given a teaspoonful of brandy at intervals and the foot was soaked in hot water, followed by an application of liquid ammonia to the wound. The treatment proved effective, although the pain lingered.

Soon afterwards, a boat load of Maoris arrived at the island. Asked if u centipede's bite was very dangerous, they said that if a centipede was caught and killed there would be no ill-effects from its wound, but that, if it escaped, the victim would die. Superstition had been set at rest in this case by tho centipede's death in a pail of water. Most Maoris these days, probably, discard the old superstition. In former times it was accepted unquestionably and was applied to all venomous crear tures, particularly the katipo spider..