OF ALL THINGS!

BY ROBERT C. BENCHLEY
NEW YORK
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY
1921

THE SOCIAL LIFE OF THE NEWT

It is not generally known that the newt, although one of the smallest of our North
American animals, has an extremely happy home-life. It is just one of those facts
which never get bruited about.

I first became interested in the social phenomena of newt life early in the spring of
1913, shortly after I had finished my researches in sexual differentiation among
amœba. Since that time I have practically lived among newts, jotting down
observations, making lantern-slides, watching them in their work and in their play
(and you may rest assured that the little rogues have their play—as who does not?)
until, from much lying in a research posture on my stomach, over the inclosure in
which they were confined, I found myself developing what I feared might be
rudimentary creepers. And so, late this autumn, I stood erect and walked into my
house, where I immediately set about the compilation of the notes I had made.
So much for the non-technical introduction. The remainder of this article bids fair to
be fairly scientific.
In studying the more intimate phases of newt life, one is chiefly impressed with the
methods by means of which the males force their attentions upon the females, with
matrimony as an object. For the newt is, after all, only a newt, and has his weaknesses
just as any of the rest of us. And I, for one, would not have it different. There is little
enough fun in the world as it is.
The peculiar thing about a newt's courtship is its restraint. It is carried on, at all times,
with a minimum distance of fifty paces (newt measure) between the male and the
female. Some of the bolder males may now and then attempt to overstep the bounds of
good sportsmanship and crowd in to forty-five paces, but such tactics are frowned
upon by the Rules Committee. To the eye of an uninitiated observer, the pair might be
dancing a few of the more open figures of the minuet.
The means employed by the males to draw the attention and win the affection of those
of the opposite sex (females) are varied and extremely strategic. Until the valuable
researches by Strudlehoff in 1887 (in his "Entwickelungsmechanik") no one had been
able to ascertain just what it was that the male newt did to make the female see
anything in him worth throwing herself away on. It had been observed that the most
personally unattractive newt could advance to within fifty paces of a female of his
acquaintance and, by some coup d'œil, bring her to a point where she would, in no
uncertain terms, indicate her willingness to go through with the marriage ceremony at
an early date.
It was Strudlehoff who discovered, after watching several thousand courting newts
under a magnifying lens (questionable taste on his part, without doubt, but all is fair in
pathological love) that the male, during the courting season (the season opens on the
tenth of March and extends through the following February, leaving about ten days for
general overhauling and redecorating) gives forth a strange, phosphorescent glow
from the center of his highly colored dorsal crest, somewhat similar in effect to the
flash of a diamond scarfpin in a red necktie. This glow, according to Strudlehoff, so
fascinates the female with its air of elegance and indication of wealth, that she
immediately falls a victim to its lure.
But the little creature, true to her sex-instinct, does not at once give evidence that her
morale has been shattered. She affects a coyness and lack of interest, by hitching
herself sideways along the bottom of the aquarium, with her head turned over her
right shoulder away from the swain. A trained ear might even detect her whistling in
an indifferent manner.
The male, in the meantime, is flashing his gleamer frantically two blocks away and is
performing all sorts of attractive feats, calculated to bring the lady newt to terms. I
have seen a male, in the stress of his handicap courtship, stand on his fore-feet,
gesticulating in amorous fashion with his hind feet in the air. Franz Ingehalt, in his
"Über Weltschmerz des Newt," recounts having observed a distinct and deliberate
undulation of the body, beginning with the shoulders and ending at the filament of the
tail, which might well have been the origin of what is known to-day in scientific
circles as "the shimmy." The object seems to be the same, except that in the case of
the newt, it is the male who is the active agent.
In order to test the power of observation in the male during these manœuvers, I
carefully removed the female, for whose benefit he was undulating, and put in her
place, in slow succession, another (but less charming) female, a paper-weight of
bronze shaped like a newt, and, finally, a common rubber eraser. From the distance at
which the courtship was being carried on, the male (who was, it must be admitted, a
bit near-sighted congenitally) was unable to detect the change in personnel, and
continued, even in the presence of the rubber eraser, to gyrate and undulate in a most
conscientious manner, still under the impression that he was making a conquest.
At last, worn out by his exertions, and disgusted at the meagerness of the reaction on
the eraser, he gave a low cry of rage and despair and staggered to a nearby pan
containing barley-water, from which he proceeded to drink himself into a gross
stupor.
Thus, little creature, did your romance end, and who shall say that its ending was one
whit less tragic than that of Camille? Not I, for one.... In fact, the two cases are not at
all analogous.
And now that we have seen how wonderfully Nature works in the fulfilment of her
laws, even among her tiniest creatures, let us study for a minute a cross-section of the
community-life of the newt. It is a life full of all kinds of exciting adventure, from
weaving nests to crawling about in the sun and catching insect larvæ and crustaceans.
The newt's day is practically never done, largely because the insect larvæ multiply
three million times as fast as the newt can possibly catch and eat them. And it takes
the closest kind of community team-work in the newt colony to get things anywhere
near cleaned up by nightfall.
It is early morning, and the workers are just appearing, hurrying to the old log which
is to be the scene of their labors. What a scampering! What a bustle! Ah, little
scamperers! Ah, little bustlers! How lucky you are, and how wise! You work long
hours, without pay, for the sheer love of working. An ideal existence, I'll tell the
scientific world.
Over here on the right of the log are the Master Draggers. Of all the newt workers,
they are the most futile, which is high praise indeed. Come, let us look closer and see
what it is that they are doing.
The one in the lead is dragging a bit of gurry out from the water and up over the edge
into the sunlight. Following him, in single file, come the rest of the Master Draggers.
They are not dragging anything, but are sort of helping the leader by crowding against
him and eating little pieces out of the filament of his tail.
And now they have reached the top. The leader, by dint of much leg-work, has
succeeded in dragging his prize to the ridge of the log.
The little workers, reaching the goal with their precious freight, are now giving it over
to the Master Pushers, who have been waiting for them in the sun all this while. The
Master Pushers' work is soon accomplished, for it consists simply in pushing the piece
of gurry over the other side of the log until it falls with a splash into the water, where
it is lost.
This part of their day's task finished, the tiny toilers rest, clustered together in a group,
waving their heads about from side to side, as who should say: "There—that's done!"
And so it is done, my little Master Draggers and my little Master Pushers,
and well done, too. Would that my own work were as clean-cut and as satisfying.
And so it goes. Day in and day out, the busy army of newts go on making the world a
better place in which to live. They have their little trials and tragedies, it is true, but
they also have their fun, as any one can tell by looking at a logful of sleeping newts on
a hot summer day.
And, after all, what more has life to offer?