Читать книгу Intelligence in Plants and Animals онлайн

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Among our first acquaintances of the sea-shore are sure to be a number of merry little sprites which do not seem to have yet mastered the lesson of walking straight ahead. Their movements will be seen to be in a direction at right angles to that towards which the head points. It is a very interesting sight to watch these apparently one-sided creatures hurrying off in their lateral progression towards their burrows in the sand or mud, or in quest of food. Pass them, and you will be surprised to see how quickly some of them will reverse their motion, seemingly without so much as pausing to glance at their pursuer, their machinery appearing to have given out at one end, thus compelling them to reverse and travel back over their old courses.

These little Fiddler- or Calling-crabs, as they are termed, are the most pronounced offenders against the commonly accepted rule of proper walking. Scattered all over the salt marshes and mud-flats, at about high-water mark, may be noted their burrows, which are about as large as a thrust made by an umbrella point, and from which can be frequently seen the little animal peeping forth, preparatory to making a sally. At another part of the flat, where the noise of your footsteps has not given signals of danger, hundreds of crabblings are busy with their out-door occupations. Draw near to them, and away they scamper to their dwellings, males and females intermingled promiscuously, the former recognizable by the undue development of one of the claws, which is carried transversely in front of the head. When the animal is provoked, this claw is brandished in a somewhat menacing manner, which has been likened by some to the pulling of a violin bow, and by others to the action of beckoning or calling, and hence the names which have been applied to these eccentric creatures.