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Encyclopedia Britannica

ICHNEUMON (Gr. ixveu)

This article appears in Volume V14, Page 243 of the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Encyclopedia Britannica - Main :: I27-INV

ICHNEUMON (Gr. ixveu) .uv, from ixveveav, to track out), the common name of the North African representative of a number of small weasel-shaped mammals belonging to the carnivorous family Viverrivae; the Indian representatives of the group being known as mongooses. A large number of species of the type genus are known, and range over southern Asia and all Africa, the typical Her pestes ichneumon also occurring in the south of Spain. The latter is an inhabitant of Egypt and the north of Africa, where it is known to foreign residents as " Pharaoh's rat." It is covered with long harsh fur of a tawny-grey colour, darker on the head and along the middle of the back, its legs reddish and its feet and tail black. It lives largely on rats and mice, birds and reptiles, and for this reason it is domesticated. It is, however, fond of poultry and their eggs, and its depredations among fowls detract from its merits as a vermin-killer. During the inundations of the Nile it is said to approach the habitations of man, but at other seasons it keeps to the fields and to the banks of the river. The Indian mongoose (H. mungo) is considerably smaller than the Egyptian animal, with fur of a
pale-grey colour, the hairs being largely white-ringed, while the cheeks and throat are more or less reddish. Like
the former it is fro- Egyptian Ichneumon (Herpestes ichneumon).
quently domesticated. It is especially serviceable in India as a serpent-killer, destroying not only the eggs and young of these creatures, but. killing the most venomous adult

snakes

SNAKES

. The fact that it survives those encounters has led to the belief that it either enjoys immunity from the effects of snake poison, or that after being bitten it has recourse, as the Hindus maintain, to the root of a plant as an antidote. It has been found, however, that when actually bitten it falls a victim to the poison as rapidly as other mammals, while there is no evidence of its seeking a vegetable antidote. The truth seems to be that the mongoose, by its exceeding agility and quickness of eye, avoids the fangs of the snake while fixing its own teeth in the back of the reptile's neck. Moreover, when excited, the mongoose erects its long stiff hair, and it must be very difficult for a snake to drive its fangs through this and the thick skin which all the members of the genus possess. The mongoose never hesitates to attack a snake; the moment he sees his enemy, " his whole nature," writes a spectator of one of those fights, " appears to he changed. His fur stands on end, and he presents the incarnation of intense rage. The snake invariably attempts to escape, but, finding it impossible to evade the rapid onslaught of the mongoose, raises his crest and lashes out fiercely at his little persecutor, who seems to delight in dodging out of the way just in time. This goes on until the mongoose sees his opportunity, when like lightning he rushes in and seizes the snake with his teeth by the back of the neck close to the head, shaking him as a terrier does a rat. These tactics are repeated until the snake is killed." The mongoose is equally dexterous in killing rats and other four-footed vermin.
ICHNEUMON-FLY, a general name applied to parasitic insects of the section Ichneumonoidea (or Entomophaga), order
Hymenoptera, from the typical genus Ichneumon, belonging to the

chief

CHIEF (from Fr. chef, head, Lat. caput)

family of that sectionitself fancifully so called after the Egyptian mammal (Herpestes). The species of the families (Ichneumonidae, Braconidae, Evaniidae, Proctotrypidae, and Chalcididae are often indiscriminately called " Ichneumons. " but the " super-family " of the Ichneumonoidea in the classification of W. H. Ashmead contains only the Evaniidae, the Stephanidae, and the large assemblage of insects usually included in the two families of the Ichneumonidae and the Braconidae, which are respectively equivalent to the Ichneumones genuini and I. adsciti of older naturalists, chiefly differing in the former having two recurrent nerves to the anterior wing,whiist the latter has only one such nerve. The Ichneumonidae proper are one of the most extensive groups of insects. Gravenhorst described some 165o European species, to which considerable subsequent additions have been made. There are 6 sub-families of the Ichneumonidae, viz. the Ichncuntoninae, Cryptinae, Agriotypinae, Ophioninae, Tryphoninae and Pimplinae, differing considerably in size and facies, but united in the common attribute of being, in their earlier stages, parasitic upon other insects. They have all long narrow bodies; a small free head with long filiform or setaceous antennae, which are never elbowed, and have always more than sixteen joints; the abdomen attached to the

thorax

THORAX (Gr. BWpaE, breastplate, also the part of the
body
- BODY
covered by it)

at its hinder extremity between the base of the posterior coxae, and provided in the female with a straight ovipositor often exserted and very long; and the wings veined, with perfect cells on the disk of the front pair. Ashmead proposes to separate the Agriotypidae (which are remarkable for their aquatic habit, being parasitic on caddis-worms) from the Ichneumonidae on account of their firm ventral abdominal segments and spined scutellum. He also separates from the Braconidae the Alysiidae as a distinct family; they have peculiar mandibles with out-turned tips.
Their parasitic habits render these flies of great importance in the

economy

ECONOMY

of nature, as they serve to check any inordinate increase in the numbers of injurious insects. Without their aid it would in many cases be impossible for the agriculturist to hold his own against the ravages of his minute

insect

INSECT

foes, whose habits are not sufficiently known to render artificial checks or destroying agents available. The females of all the species are constantly on the alert to discover the proper living food for their own larvae, which are hatched from the eggs they deposit in or on the eggs, larvae or pupae of other insects of all orders, chiefly Lepidoptcra, the caterpillars of butterflies and moths being specially attacked (as also are spiders). Any one who has watched

insect

INSECT

life during the summer can hardly have failed to notice the busy way in which the parent ichneumon, a small four-winged fly, with constantly vibrating antennae, searches for her prey; and the clusters of minute cocoons round the remains of some cabbage-butterfly caterpillar must also have been observed by many. This is the work of Apanteles (or Microgaster) glomeratus, one of the Braconidae, which in days past was a source of disquietude to naturalists, who believed that the life of the one defunct larva had transmigrated into the numerous smaller flies reared from it. Ichneumon-flies which attack external feeders have a short ovipositor, but those attached to

wood

-feeding insects have that organ of great length, for the purpose of reaching the haunts of their concealed prey. Thus a species from Japan (Bras-on penetrator) has its ovipositor nine times the length of the

body

BODY

; and the large species of Rh yssa and Ephialtes, parasitic on Sirex and large

wood

-boring beetles in temperate Europe, have very long instruments (with which when handled they will endeavour to sting, sometimes penetrating the skin), in order to get at their secreted victims. A common reddish-coloured species of Opltion (0. obscurum), with a sabre-shaped abdomen, is noteworthy from the fact of its eggs being attached by stalks outside the body of the caterpillar of the puss-moth (Cerura vinula). Lepidopterists wishing to breed the latter cut off the eggs of the parasite with

scissors

SCISSORS

.
The larvae of the ichneumon-flies are white, fleshy, cylindrical, footless grubs; the majority of them spin silk cocoons beforepupating, often in a mass (sometimes almost geometrically), and sometimes in layers of different colours and texture. AuTHORrTIEs.Among the older works on Ichneumonoidea may be specially mentioned J. L. K. Gravenhorst, Ichneumonologia Europaea (Breslau, 1829); A. H. Haliday (Entom. Mag. i.-v., 18331838), and A. Forster (Verhandl. Naturhist. Ver. Rheinl. u. Westph. xix., xxv., 1862, 1868). Full reference to the systematic literature of the group will be found in C. G. de Dalla Torre's Catalogus hymenopterorum, vols. iii., iv. (

Leipzig

LEIPZIG

, 1898-1902), and a comprehensive summary in W. H. Ashmead's

recent

RECENT

memoir (Prot. U.S. Nat. Mus. xxiii., 1901). For the British species consult C. Morley, Ichneumons of Great Britain (Plymouth, 1903), and T. A. Marshall (Trans. Entom. Soc., 1885-1899). (G. H. C.)

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