Lab
Library
Journal
Shop
Sign in
to keep
Share image
1
136
My Studio Neighbors
·
W. Hamilton Gibson
42
By
inserting
my
knife-blade
deep
into
the
soil
in
the
neighborhood
of
this
burrow
I
readily
unearthed
the
buried
caterpillar,
and
disclosed
the
ominous
egg
of
the
wasp
firmly
imbedded
in
its
body.
The
hungry
larva
which
hatches
from
this
egg
soon
reaches
maturity
upon
the
all-sufficient
food
thus
stored,
and
before
many
weeks
is
transformed
to
the
full-fledged,
long-waisted
wasp
like
its
parent.
The
disproportion
in
the
sizes
of
the
predatory
wasps
and
their
insect
prey
is
indeed
astonishing.
The
great
sand-hornet
selects
for
its
most
frequent
victim
the
buzzing
cicada,
or
harvest-fly,
an
insect
much
larger
than
itself,
and
which
it
carries
off
to
its
long
sand
tunnels
by
short
flights
from
successive
elevated
points,
such
as
the
limbs
of
trees
and
summits
of
rocks,
to
which
it
repeatedly
lugs
its
clumsy
prey.
In
the
present
instance
the
contrast
between
the
slight
body
of
the
wasp
and
the
plump
dimensions
of
the
caterpillar
was
even
more
marked,
and
I
determined
to
ascertain
the
proportionate
weight
of
victor
and
victim.
Constructing
a
tiny
pair
of
balances
with
a
dead
grass
stalk,
thread,
and
two
disks
of
paper,
I
weighed
the
wasp,
using
small
square
pieces
of
paper
of
equal
size
as
my
weights.
I
found
that
the
wasp
exactly
balanced
four
of
the
pieces.
Removing
the
wasp
and
substituting
the
caterpillar,
I
proceeded
to
add
piece
after
piece
of
the
paper
squares
until
I
had
reached
a
total
of
twenty-eight,
or
seven
times
the
number
required
by
the
wasp,
before
the
scales
balanced.
Similar
experiments
with
the
tiny
black
wasp
and
its
spider
victim
showed
precisely
the
same
proportion,
and
the
ratio
was
once
increased
eight
to
one
in
the
instance
of
another
species
of
slender
orange-and-black-bodied
digger
which
I
subsequently
found
tugging
its
caterpillar
prey
upon
my
door-step
patch.
Marker
Marker
Fine marker
White-out
Fine white-out
Circle
Paint
Unmarker
Hand
Scalpel
Dice
Sieve
Purify
Undo
Redo
Start over
