Cheats and deceits : how animals and

plants exploit and mislead 1st Edition

Stevens
Visit to download the full and correct content document:
https://textbookfull.com/product/cheats-and-deceits-how-animals-and-plants-exploit-a
nd-mislead-1st-edition-stevens/
More products digital (pdf, epub, mobi) instant
download maybe you interests ...

Aquaculture: Farming Aquatic Animals and Plants Third

Edition. Edition John S Lucas

https://textbookfull.com/product/aquaculture-farming-aquatic-
animals-and-plants-third-edition-edition-john-s-lucas/

Ecotoxicology Essentials Environmental Contaminants and

their Biological Effects on Animals and Plants 1st
Edition Donald W. Sparling

https://textbookfull.com/product/ecotoxicology-essentials-
environmental-contaminants-and-their-biological-effects-on-
animals-and-plants-1st-edition-donald-w-sparling/

Costa Rican Traditional Knowledge According to Local

Experiences Plants Animals Medicine and Music Manuel
Ortega-Rodríguez

https://textbookfull.com/product/costa-rican-traditional-
knowledge-according-to-local-experiences-plants-animals-medicine-
and-music-manuel-ortega-rodriguez/

Tempests Poxes Predators and People Stress in Wild

Animals and How They Cope 1st Edition L.Michael Romero

https://textbookfull.com/product/tempests-poxes-predators-and-
people-stress-in-wild-animals-and-how-they-cope-1st-edition-l-
michael-romero/
Coulson and Richardson’s Chemical Engineering, Fourth
Edition: Volume 3A: Chemical and Biochemical Reactors
and Reaction Engineering R. Ravi

https://textbookfull.com/product/coulson-and-richardsons-
chemical-engineering-fourth-edition-volume-3a-chemical-and-
biochemical-reactors-and-reaction-engineering-r-ravi/

How to Write Good Programs A Guide for Students 1st

Edition Perdita Stevens

https://textbookfull.com/product/how-to-write-good-programs-a-
guide-for-students-1st-edition-perdita-stevens/

Animals and Religion 1st Edition Dave Aftandilian

https://textbookfull.com/product/animals-and-religion-1st-
edition-dave-aftandilian/

Clean Meat How Growing Meat Without Animals Will

Revolutionize Dinner and the World Paul Shapiro

https://textbookfull.com/product/clean-meat-how-growing-meat-
without-animals-will-revolutionize-dinner-and-the-world-paul-
shapiro/

Forgiving Flynn Enemies to Lovers 4 1st Edition Angela

Stevens Hot Hunks Stevens Angela

https://textbookfull.com/product/forgiving-flynn-enemies-to-
lovers-4-1st-edition-angela-stevens-hot-hunks-stevens-angela/
CHEATS AND DECEITS
 3
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,
United Kingdom
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of
Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries
© Martin Stevens 2016
The moral rights of the author have been asserted
First Edition published in 2016
Impression: 1
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics
rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above
You must not circulate this work in any other form
and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer
Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press
198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Data available
Library of Congress Control Number: 2015944361
ISBN 978–0–19–870789–9
Printed in Great Britain by
Clays Ltd, St Ives plc
Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and
for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials
contained in any third party website referenced in this work.
For Audrey and Samuel
 PREFACE

Most of us will have encountered one form of deception or another in the

natural world. It’s hard not to because deception is everywhere. It ranges from
the relatively familiar sight of a caterpillar camouflaged on a tree, to the way
that some orchids elaborately mimic the smell and appearance of female
insects. But what’s often less well appreciated is the intricacy, extent, and
sometimes the extremity of deceit and manipulation used by animals, plants,
and even fungi. This is perhaps partly because deception often occurs in many
habitats that we are somewhat less familiar with (such as the deep sea or
tropical rainforests), and because it frequently occurs in sensory modalities
that we are less well attuned to (such as ultraviolet light or ultrasonic sounds).
In short, the more we look for deception and trickery in nature, the more we
find it. I have spent most of my career working on various aspects of
deception, from camouflage in crabs through to mimicry by cuckoos, and
the extent that organisms go to in order to manipulate one another still
astounds me. In some regards it shouldn’t, because biologists have long
appreciated that being successful, in evolutionary terms, is about passing on
your genes to the next generation, and if that means tricking and exploiting
others to do so, then so be it. It is, however, the sophisticated adaptations and
intricacy involved in many forms of deception, and the number of forms of
deception that exist in nature, that never ceases to amaze me.
This book is about what we know regarding deception in nature (and what
we don’t). It is about the types of deception that exist, how they work, and the
historical context and significance that deception has had, and continues to
have, in understanding evolution and adaptation. It is also very much about
the modern scientific work that has sought to investigate and understand

vii
 PREFACE

deception across a wide range of organisms. Each chapter discusses one or

two main types or functions of deception broadly covering three main areas:
obtaining food, avoiding being eaten, and reproduction. Without wishing to
give too much away, Chapter 1 focuses on a couple of specific examples
(especially how some caterpillars trick ants into looking after them) to intro-
duce some key ideas and concepts in the study of deception, and to illustrate
just how sophisticated it can be. Chapter 2 discusses how animals mimic other
species, or aspects of the environment, in order to steal food from others and
to capture their prey. This theme is continued into Chapter 3, which discusses
the ways in which many species (especially spiders) use deceptive communi-
cation signals and stimuli to actively lure prey towards them through a variety
of approaches. The book then turns to how animals use deception in order to
avoid becoming a meal themselves, starting with various types of camouflage
(Chapter 4), followed by how harmless animals mimic other dangerous spe-
cies so that predators avoid them (Chapter 5), and then how other species use
sudden startle displays and other deceptive tactics to cause predators to flee or
ignore them (Chapter 6). Chapters 7 and 8 move on to the ways that animals,
plants, and fungi trick and manipulate individuals of the same and different
species for reproduction. We start with how birds and insects dupe others into
rearing their young, before moving on to how individuals manipulate poten-
tial partners and rivals in mating. Chapter 9 then brings things back together
to highlight some of the key areas and concepts of deception, and looks
forwards to what we still need to understand and discover.
There are several processes that are thought by scientists to drive the
evolution of deception in nature. Defining key concepts in a subject like this
is important if we are to be clear about where different processes occur, and
how the type of deception discussed actually works and evolves. However,
while important, there is a risk that formal definitions can become overly dry,
and I did not want to interrupt the story of how different types of deception
work too much by introducing semantics from the outset. Instead, I have tried
to find a balance between discussing the varied types and examples of
deception and how they work without being too formal, while still outlining
what the key concepts are. Beyond the brief description that follows here,

viii
 PREFACE

I have generally introduced key terms, including when they may occur in
nature, where they are first relevant in the book, rather than adopting a more
formal set of definitions and concepts from the very outset in Chapter 1. Of
these, perhaps the most familiar type of deception is mimicry. Here, an indi-
vidual resembles another species in some way, such that it can deceive others
into considering it as the ‘wrong’ object type. For example, some species of
harmless snake match the banding colours of venomous species to avoid
predators—something called Batesian mimicry. Conversely, aggressive mimicry
occurs when mimicry is used in an antagonistic way. For example, some
insects resemble the colour and shape of flowers to avoid being recognized
and avoided by their prey, which frequently visit real flowers. Camouflage is
also a widespread and intuitive idea (though much more complex and intri-
guing than generally realized). Frequently, camouflage involves matching the
appearance of the environment, or some specific object in it (such as a dead
leaf), so that a predator (or prey item) fails to detect or recognize it. There is
one other key concept worth highlighting here too: sensory exploitation. This
occurs when an individual produces a communication signal that has evolved
to be highly effective in stimulating the sensory system of another animal (of
the same or another species). In doing so, the individual making the signal can
elicit a greater behavioural response from its target than might otherwise have
been the case. For example, some frogs produce mating calls that have
evolved specific sound properties that strongly stimulate the hearing sensitiv-
ity of females, and in doing so increase their chances of mating. Sensory
exploitation seems to be a common way that deception arises and works
in nature.
In principle, this book could have been organized by another set of ideas or
subjects, and we should not think of the topic(s) of each chapter and the
notions discussed as isolated from one another. On the contrary, I have tried
throughout to indicate common concepts and theories and attempt to link
them together. Nonetheless, the main themes of each chapter seemed to be
the most logical way to organize things; being the broad types of deception
that exist and what ultimately they achieve. It should also be said that the
comparative length of certain chapters and extent of the ideas discussed does

ix
 PREFACE

not mean that some areas are more or less important than others. Instead,
they reflect the relative popularity (past and present) of work testing these
areas, and no doubt some lack of knowledge on my part too. The same point
goes for the taxonomic spread of the examples discussed, although whether
deception is more common in some groups of organism is an interesting
question (and one discussed in Chapter 9). Finally, a book like this is not
designed to cover all known examples of deception. It’s more about our
fundamental understanding of the subject area and the scientific experiments
designed to test those ideas. The examples chosen are those that I personally
felt were most interesting and helpful in highlighting key concepts and the
work undertaken to test them. In some cases, I could have chosen different
examples.
Writing this book was a challenge, but a deeply enjoyable one. Part of that
reason was the substantial help and assistance provided by a great many
people. First, I would like to sincerely thank Latha Menon, Jenny Nugee, and
Kate Gilks at OUP for helping with all stages of the book, providing a range of
comments and feedback on the manuscript, answering a plethora of questions
from me along the way, and much more. Their help was invaluable and
always highly constructive. Beyond OUP, in the first instance it was Tim
Caro who gave me the initial push to bite the bullet and write this book
when I mentioned the idea to him some time ago. He also kindly read the
entire manuscript and gave considerable feedback on an earlier draft. I also
owe a great deal of thanks to the following people, who read various chapters
for me and gave a range of feedback, knowledge, and general encouragement:
Caitlin Kight, Graeme Ruxton, Lina Arenas, Sara Mynott, Emmanuelle Briolat,
Jenny Easley, Sam Smithers, Laura Kelley, Kate Marshall, Anna Hughes, David
Nash, Tom Flower, and Tom Sherratt. Many other people also provided useful
information. In addition, I would like to thank everyone who kindly supplied
(frequently donated) images of their work, making it possible to have such a
widely and colourfully illustrated book. Last, but certainly not least, I thank
my wife Audrey for her constant enthusiasm, encouragement, and positivity
throughout this project. As with everything else, I simply could not have done
it without her.

x
 CONTENTS

List of Figures xiii

1. The Basis of Deception in Nature 1

2. Thieves and Liars 20

3. Lured into an Early Grave 45

4. Disruption and Dazzle 74

5. A Spider in Ant’s Clothing 117

6. Bluff and Surprise 149

7. An Imposter in the Nest 190

8. Spreading Genes and Sexual Mimicry 228

9. The Future of Deception 258

Notes and References 271

Further Reading 292
Index 293

xi
 LIST OF FIGURES

1. The alcon blue (Maculinea alcon) 2

2. Examples of deception 4
3. Alcon blue caterpillars being tended to by worker ants inside
the nest, and a pupa of the butterfly in the nest 7
4. The Australian crab spider (Thomisus spectabilis) 17
5. Multiple deceptive calls of fork-tailed drongo (Dicrurus adsimilis) 23
6. Disguise and aggressive mimicry by the bluestriped fangblenny
(Plagiotremus rhinorhynchos) 27
7. Bee mimicry by aggregations of blister beetle (Meloe franciscanus)
larvae 32
8. A real aggregation of blister beetle larvae, and a model made
from aluminium and painted brown 34
9. Dusky dottybacks mimicking the coloration of different
damselfish species 36
10. Chromatophore cells of a dusky dottyback 37
11. The orchid mantis (Hymenopus coronatus) 39
12. Models of the orchid mantis 42
13. The St Andrew’s cross spider (Argiope aemula) 47
14. The underside of an orchid spider (Leucauge magnifica) and
a giant wood spider (Nephila pilipes) 52
15. Artificial dummy spiders made from cardboard 53
16. A female bolas spider (Mastophora hutchinsoni) 57
17. Two species of anglerfish (Linophryne arborifera and
Melanocoetus murrayi) 65

xiii
 LIST OF FIGURES

18. Pitchers of the plant Nepenthes khasiana under white light

and UV light 69
19. The remarkable camouflage of some animals 76
20. The peppered moth (Biston betularia) 78
21. Camouflage of the shore crab (Carcinus maenas) against different
rock pool backgrounds 86
22. The impressively variable appearance of shore crabs
(Carcinus maenas) 87
23. The experiments of Bond and Kamil used to test prey
polymorphism and predator search images 91
24. Japanese quail (Coturnix japonica) egg patterns that vary from
one female to the next 94
25. The disguises of the Australian giant cuttlefish (Sepia apama) 96
26. The principle of disruptive coloration 100
27. Testing the survival value of disruptive coloration against
avian predators 104
28. An early illustration from 1892 of leaf mimicry by
Kallima butterflies 108
29. Experiment testing masquerade using chicks, and
caterpillars that mimic twigs 109
30. Leaf mimicry by gliding lizards 112
31. Computer ‘game’ experiments 114
32. Examples of Batesian mimicry by harmless insects 119
33. Mimicry by different hoverfly species 122
34. Ant-mimicking jumping spiders 131
35. Difference in appearance between male and female
ant-mimicking jumping spiders 134
36. Imperfect mimicry by hoverflies of wasps 138
37. Mimicry by kingsnakes 142
38. Artificial snakes used to test how predators respond
to different colour patterns and markings 143

xiv
 LIST OF FIGURES

39. An Amazonian bird (Laniocera hypopyrra) with chicks said

to resemble a locally occurring toxic caterpillar 147
40. The startle displays of underwing moths 151
41. The startle or threat display of a cuttlefish 156
42. The colourful wings and eyespots of the peacock butterfly
(Aglais io) 160
43. The eyed hawk-moth (Smerinthus ocellatus) 162
44. Example paper butterflies used to test some of the features
that make eyespots effective in scaring away birds 167
45. The eyespots on the owl butterfly (Caligo spp.) 170
46. A species of caterpillar from Costa Rica with a striking similarity
to a venomous snake, most likely Hemeroplanes ornatus 172
47. Final instar of the Canadian tiger swallowtail (Papilio canadensis)
caterpillar, and an example of the artificial caterpillar prey
with an eyespot 172
48. A large wall brown (Lasiommata maera) 175
49. An experiment testing the deflective function of eyespots 177
50. A branded imperial (Eooxylides tharis distanti) butterfly from
Singapore with long tail-like extensions to its hindwings 179
51. A Townsend’s big-eared bat (Corynorhinus townsendii) attacking
the moth Bertholdia trigona 184
52. The Japanese Horsfield’s hawk-cuckoo (Cuculus fugax) 192
53. The common cuckoo (Cuculus canorus) 196
54. Painted model eggs 200
55. Mimicry by host races of the common cuckoo 202
56. Mimicry in cuckoo finch eggs 204
57. Experiments revealing what features of egg colour and pattern
host birds use to detect and reject foreign eggs 205
58. Chick mimicry by Australian bronze-cuckoos 210
59. Chick killing by greater honeyguide young 213
60. Playback experiment of chick calls 215
61. The wing patches of the Horsfield’s hawk-cuckoo young 217

xv
 LIST OF FIGURES

62. Many bees are ‘cuckoo’ species, laying their eggs in the nests
of other species and exploiting their resources 223
63. Deception by Cryptostylis orchids 234
64. The South African daisy (Gorteria diffusa) 236
65. The fungus Neonothopanus gardneri 238
66. A male great bowerbird (Ptilonorhynchus nuchalis), his bower,
and the grey and white decorations 241
67. A Japanese macaque (Macaca fuscata) and a bald uakari
monkey (Cacajao calvus) 245
68. A female damselfly (Ischnura heterosticta) 256
69. The leaf-mimicking butterfly Kallima inachus and how changes
to the butterfly ‘ground plan’ have underpinned its evolution 262

xvi
 1
THE BASIS OF DECEPTION
IN NATURE

In the meadows of Europe and Asia lives an endangered and beautiful

species of butterfly, the alcon blue (Maculinea alcon). Females lay small
white eggs on plants, on to which the young caterpillars emerge to feed
on the flowers. Once a caterpillar has grown sufficiently, it drops to the
ground and is discovered by a species of Myrmica ant. At this point,
most small insects would be attacked and killed as prey, yet remarkably
the worker ants instead dutifully carry the caterpillar back to their nest
unharmed (Figure 1). Once inside, the caterpillar takes up residence and
is fed by the ant workers as one of their own, using the ants’ own
resources to grow and develop until the point when it has built up the
remaining 98 per cent of the required mass it needs to pupate. The
whole process can take up to one or even two complete years, and a
month after pupating the new butterfly emerges and leaves the nest
ready to repeat the life cycle.
Some studies have estimated that 90 per cent of alcon blue caterpil-
lars that leave their host plants successfully end up inside an ant nest.
So what makes them so successful? In short, it all comes down to
trickery and deception. Each caterpillar deceives and exploits the ants
to its own advantage by resembling their hosts’ smell and sounds, so

1
 CHEATS AND DECEITS

FIG. 1. The alcon blue (Maculinea alcon). Top: an adult butterfly with its beautiful blue color-
ation. Bottom left: the caterpillars hatch and initially feed on the host plant, before dropping to
the ground. Bottom right: a worker ant picks up a caterpillar and transports it back to the nest.
Images David Nash

2
 THE BASIS OF DECEPTION IN NATURE

that the ants take the caterpillar and care for it as one of their own
young. The alcon blue is not alone in having such a life cycle, with a
variety of other species of blue butterfly sharing similar modes of
reproduction (although the taxonomy of this group is complex and
controversial).1
The alcon blue is one of countless species of plant and animal that
deceive others for their own benefit. Many early naturalists, including
Charles Darwin and his contemporaries, were all too aware that the
natural world is not a harmonious place. While we often see instances
of apparent cooperation, selfishness and exploitation rule the day
(Figure 2). Organisms face a continuous fight to survive and reproduce,
and any advantage in obtaining a mate, locating food, or avoiding
predators pays dividends. Unsurprisingly then, many animals and
plants (and even some fungi) trick, cheat, and deceive each other to
their own advantage, just like the alcon blue butterfly, which deceives
ants for resources and a safe place to live. Deception is found widely in
nature, from insects in the forest canopy mimicking twigs and dead
leaves to hide from predators, to fish that attract prey with biolumin-
escent lures in the dark depths of the ocean.
In nature, organisms often engage in some form of communication,
in which one individual sends a message or ‘signal’ to another. For
example, a male peacock might try to impress a peahen about his high
quality as a mate using his gaudy tail feathers as a signal. Scientists
often consider deception in nature as occurring when one party, often
of another species, exploits a communication system like this in order
to create false, exaggerated, or misleading information. Deception
should benefit those practising it, but is often costly to the animals
being tricked, from lost time or resources such as food, through to a
greatly increased risk of death. This book is about how deception
works in nature and how it evolves. It is about how and why some
spiders mimic ants, many orchids resemble the smell and appearance

3
 CHEATS AND DECEITS

FIG. 2. Examples of deception. Top left: a harmless hoverfly (Eristalis tenax), mimicking the
appearance of a bee to gain protection against predators. Top right: a freckled nightjar
(Caprimulgus tristigma) using camouflage to prevent detection from predators. Middle left:
many spiders use bright colours to lure prey to their webs, such as this banded-legged golden

4
 THE BASIS OF DECEPTION IN NATURE

orb web spider (Nephilia senegalensis). Middle right: camouflage is also used by predators to creep
upon their prey, like this preying mantis (unknown species). Bottom left: a nest of a fantail
warbler (Cisticola juncidis), with two parasitic eggs of the cuckoo finch (Anomalospiza imberbis),
which uses other birds to rear its young. Bottom right: some male animals mimic females to
increase mating success. These are Australian giant cuttlefish (Sepia apama), with the bottom
individual a female, the top individual a consorting male, and the cuttlefish in the middle a
female mimic.
Top and middle images Martin Stevens; bottom-left image
Claire Spottiswoode; bottom-right image Roger Hanlon

of insects, various birds lay their eggs in other species’ nests, and much
more. We will discuss these questions and many others, including
numerous and wonderful examples from nature, as well as the clever
science and experiments that have led to our current understanding of
deception. Ultimately, this book is about what deception can tell us
about how species interact with one another, and the processes of
evolution and adaptation.
Let’s return to our example of blue butterflies and what they can tell
us about deception. Ants are among the most numerous organisms on
earth, playing a major role in habitats the world over in their varied
relationships with countless other species, from acting as predators
through to protectors. Their importance in numerous ecosystems is
enhanced by the fact that perhaps as many as 10,000 or more other
species of insect live alongside and exploit ants. Many such cheats have
evolved adaptations to reduce the chance of being attacked and killed
by ants, such as mimicking the chemical cues that ants use to recognize
one another. Such species are often called ‘social parasites’ because of
the way each individual parasite exploits not just a single ant but an
entire colony (we will cover further instances of this in Chapter 7). The
butterfly family Lycaenidae is one of the largest of all butterfly groups,
comprising species such as the hairstreaks and blue butterflies. Many of
the 5,000 or so species have caterpillars that associate with ants in

5
 CHEATS AND DECEITS

some way, often mutualistically where both the ant and caterpillar
benefit.2 For example, some caterpillars produce sugary secretions
that ants feed on, with the ants in return defending the caterpillars
from attack against potential predators. Other caterpillars exploit ants
directly for resources, an approach thought to exist in around 200 or
more species. The most remarkable cases involve the large blue butter-
flies (Maculinea, sometimes now called phengaris)1 found throughout
Europe and Asia, including the alcon blue (M. alcon).
Other Maculinea butterflies start life in much the same way as M. alcon,
with the caterpillar initially feeding on the flower buds of a host plant
before dropping to the plant base to be discovered and taken back to a
nest of Myrmica ants. After this, depending on the butterfly species, one
of two things normally happens. Either the caterpillar becomes preda-
tory, feeding on the larvae of the ants themselves, or it becomes a type of
cuckoo. In the latter case, just like its avian equivalent (much more about
these in Chapter 7), the caterpillar integrates itself into the nest and is
tended to and fed by the ants directly (Figure 3). In some cases, the
worker ants are so busy meeting the caterpillar’s needs that they neglect
their own larvae. In fact, when food is scarce the ‘nurse’ ants sometimes
even kill their own brood to feed them to the caterpillar. These kinds of
lifestyle—‘cuckoo’ or ‘predator’—are found in two separate groups of
Maculinea, with genetic analyses estimating that the lineages split around
five million years ago.2
At this point we might ask in more detail why the ants take the
caterpillars back to the nest and tolerate them feeding off their own
resources or young. That is, why are the ants so effectively deceived? It
had long been suspected that many social parasites that exploited ants
relied on chemical mimicry to enter ant nests and stay safe, and that
blue butterfly caterpillars mimic the chemical profiles of their ant hosts.
But it was not until the end of the 1990s that evidence for chemical
mimicry by blue butterflies was clearly demonstrated. A study by

6
 THE BASIS OF DECEPTION IN NATURE

FIG. 3. Top: alcon blue caterpillars being tended to by worker ants inside the nest. Sometimes
the same ant colony can have multiple larvae to look after. Bottom: a pupa of the butterfly
in the nest.
Images David Nash

Toshiharu Akino and colleagues,3 at the University of Southampton

and the Institute of Terrestrial Ecology in the UK, revealed a number of
key aspects of M. alcon’s deception. In the first instance, they showed
that the caterpillars produce chemicals on their body surface, called
cuticular hydrocarbons, and that these closely resemble those that the

7
 CHEATS AND DECEITS

ants use to recognize other workers and their brood. Next, experiments
using small glass dummies showed that, despite being of no value or
use to the ants, the dummies would be transported back to their nests
by ants when treated with chemical extracts of either the ants or the
caterpillars. In addition, the chemicals that the caterpillars made were
closer to those produced by the specific species of ant that M. alcon
targets than to other Myrmica species in the area. Further evidence
collected by Akino and the team showed that caterpillar mimicry
apparently has two components or stages. Caterpillars initially synthe-
size compounds that mimic the ants’ odour profiles in order to gain
access to the nest. Then, once inside, they acquire additional com-
pounds that refine their mimicry further. This is likely facilitated either
by the caterpillars physically making contact with ants and the nest
environment, so that the chemicals rub off on to the caterpillar’s body,
or by further synthesis of chemicals by the caterpillar. Heightened
mimicry is important; caterpillars are more likely to die, presumably
as a result of host ant discovery, during the initial few days of integra-
tion, and so additional protection is necessary to deceive the ants and
survive in the long run. The process might also enable caterpillars to
start off mimicking the chemical components of more than one ant
species, and subsequently refine their resemblance to just one species,
or even one colony, once they have been adopted. Ultimately, mimicry
by caterpillars, like many forms of deception, is underpinned by selec-
tion for increasing discernment from those parties being deceived—in
this case the need for ants to recognize intruders. This likely begins as a
general defence against any intruders that fail to match the ant colony’s
odour profile. As successive generations of caterpillar smell more and
more like the ants they target, the workers need to evolve more refined
recognition mechanisms. This is especially important in small ant-
colonies where loss of eggs through predation or resources through
cuckoo-like caterpillars can be especially costly.

8
 THE BASIS OF DECEPTION IN NATURE

The outcome of heightened mimicry by caterpillars and improved

defences by ants can trigger a process called co-evolution, whereby
changes in the properties of one party (e.g. better mimicry) lead to
reciprocal evolutionary changes in the other party (e.g. more refined
defences). We will encounter this process several times during the
book, especially when we deal with the avian brood parasites, such as
cuckoos, in Chapter 7. Sometimes, co-evolution leads to increased
specialization by parasites because they must evolve more effective
and specific mimicry to overcome host defences. The problem with
this, however, is that it can prevent successful targeting of other host
species, or even other host colonies that live in different geographical
regions if colonies have different odour profiles. In regions where
parasites occur, selection can favour ant colonies that evolve new
odour profiles. This can enable the ants to ‘escape’ parasitism because
the caterpillars no longer closely resemble the host odours and so are
easier to detect. Such evolutionary ‘arms races’ are common in inter-
actions between species, as the deceptive party continuously tries to
better outwit increasingly savvy targets. These concepts are illustrated
in blue butterflies because arms races have led to a mosaic of evolu-
tionary interactions in geographic regions, with different populations
of butterfly and ant trying to get ahead of one another and each
heading off in different directions.4 As a result, ant colonies of the
same species can diverge in their chemical signatures when they live in
different places, and the local parasites must do the same thing. As the
parasite becomes more specialized with regard to local host colonies
they also become less effective mimics of ant colonies elsewhere. As
such, specialization in deception can be a double-edged sword because
it can close off other opportunities for cheats.
Chemical mimicry is not the only trick that the caterpillars use. It
had been reported for some time that they also make sounds resem-
bling the noises and vibrations of ants. This, however, was seldom

9
 CHEATS AND DECEITS

considered an important part of the adoption and integration process,

compared to chemical mimicry. That assumption is reasonable
because it’s widely known that chemical profiles in ants play a key
role in recognition of nest mates and intruders. But the noises cater-
pillars make do seem to have another role inside the nest, as has
recently been shown through work by Francesca Barbero from the
University of Turin and colleagues from the UK.5 The ant Myrmica
schencki is parasitized by M. alcon. Queen ants are afforded special status,
protection, and care from worker ants, and part of the way that queens
achieve this is through making distinctive sounds and vibrations to the
workers around them. The caterpillar also makes sounds and vibra-
tions, and these noises are more similar to those of queen ants than
workers. It seems that the sounds allow the caterpillar to elevate its
status in the nest, being treated not simply as another brood item or
worker, but rather more like a queen. They cause more worker ants to
stand on guard and defend the queen or caterpillar, and if such sounds
denote special status then this might also explain why some worker
ants prioritize feeding butterfly caterpillars over their own brood. This
aspect of the caterpillar’s trickery demonstrates another broad aspect of
deception: that many animals not only have ways to defeat the detec-
tion and recognition mechanisms of those they exploit, but once they
have done so they often evolve ways to extract as much care or
protection as they can. Once pupation to an adult butterfly is complete,
the final stage is to leave the nest and emerge. Here, deception is often
discarded in favour of a quick escape. The alcon blue, for example, is
sometimes recognized as an intruder by ants as it leaves, but is covered
in so many loosely attached scales that the ants cannot grab on to it to
attack properly.
The utilization of sounds to solicit extra care by caterpillars also
allows us to consider for the first time the distinction between two key
processes involved in deception that we will encounter throughout this

10
 THE BASIS OF DECEPTION IN NATURE

book: mimicry and sensory exploitation. Mimicry is a term often used

rather loosely, even by scientists, to describe the situation when two
species or individuals resemble one another in some way, for instance
through similar coloration or smell. But this basic idea is not strictly
accurate, because genuine cases of mimicry occur when one species
has come under selection to resemble another closely enough that an
observer is fooled into considering it as a different object type entirely.
Simply looking the same is not enough. For example, a predatory bird
may see a flying insect with black and yellow stripes and mistake it for a
nasty wasp, even though it’s really a harmless hoverfly. This is called
Batesian mimicry, and we will learn much more about it in Chapter 5.
In our ant example, one ant may mistakenly recognize a caterpillar as
another ant, specifically a queen, and it’s this misclassification that
characterizes mimicry.
However, there are other reasons why two species or stimuli may
come to resemble one another. The most obvious is convergent evo-
lution. For example, both sharks and dolphins have a sleek hydro-
dynamic shape to move efficiently through water, yet clearly neither
animal is trying to mimic the other. Instead, they have a common
selection pressure owing to their shared environment. Sensory exploit-
ation is a process often associated with deception, and in some cases it
can lead to convergence in the appearance of different species when
they share the same observer (for example the same predator species).
It is not a simple concept at first consideration, but it’s likely to be
important in many aspects of deception. In the case of the blue
butterfly, the caterpillar produces sounds that solicit extra care. This
could be mimicry, but instead the sounds might simply exploit ‘pref-
erences’ or biases in the way that the ants’ sensory systems and
behaviour naturally favour certain stimuli. For example, maybe the
ants’ sensory systems are especially good at detecting sounds of specific
amplitudes and frequencies, and the queen ants exploit this bias by

11
 CHEATS AND DECEITS

producing sounds that match the ants’ preferences or sensitivity in

order to solicit care and enhance their status. In theory other sounds
would work too, but the most effective ones are those that exploit the
peak sensitivity in the ants’ ability to detect sounds and vibrations. This
is just like the way that many begging bird chicks have bright mouth
colours and vocalizations that are effective at inducing their parents
into bringing more food. Their elaborate displays stimulate the parents
into higher provisioning rates. In the ants’ nest, a caterpillar would,
therefore, benefit by producing sounds similar to those of the queen to
extract maximum care from its hosts. Different sounds would be less
effective in stimulating the worker ants, leading to reduced care. In this
case, the queen and caterpillar may evolve similar sounds not because
one benefits from being misidentified as the other, but rather because
both have, over time, independently adopted a particular sound
that elicits a strong response from the workers. The ants are not
making any distinction between the two objects in this whole process
(they are not deciding whether the sound denotes ‘queen ant’ or
‘caterpillar’), but merely responding to a stimulus that they favour,
leading to greater levels of care. If this is true, then there has been no
selection for the caterpillar to mimic the queen ants and to cause
recognition errors.
The above may sound far-fetched at first, but numerous studies have
now shown that animals have sensory systems with hidden or latent
biases towards certain stimuli (such as colours, sounds, or smells) that
evolved before any communication signal existed to exploit them.
These can arise simply as a by-product of the way that nerve cells
making the sensory system are linked together, or they could evolve
under selection in another context entirely. For example, some pri-
mates (including humans) have very good colour vision for detecting
red objects and discriminating these from green backgrounds. This
ability most likely evolved under selection to detect ripe red and yellow

12
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
open one into another, giving a fine perspective, and they lead,
through a dozen different doorways, on to a splendid, white-tiled
verandah which runs out to the bank of the Pásig River. There is a
picturesque, moss-covered river landing on the verandah below.
There are about twenty rooms on the one floor, all of them good
sized and some of them enormous, and it took a great many servants
to keep the place in order. The floors were all of beautiful hardwoods
and it required a permanent force of six muchachos to keep them in
a proper state of polish. The Filipino method of polishing floors is
interesting. Your muchacho ties either banana leaves or some sort of
bags on his bare feet, then he skates up and down, up and down,
until the floors get so slick that he himself can hardly stand up on
them. It is easy to imagine that six boys skating together in the
spaciousness of the Palace might cut fancy figures and have a
delightful time generally, if they thought they were unobserved.
Filipinos of the muchacho class always play like children, no matter
what they are doing, and they have to be treated like children.
The Palace furniture, which must have been very fine in Spanish
days, was of red narra, or Philippine mahogany, handsomely carved
and displaying on every piece the Spanish coat-of-arms. But during
the changing Spanish régimes some one with a bizarre taste had
covered all the beautiful wood with a heavy coat of black paint. The
effect was depressingly sombre to me.
The porcelain, however, or what was left of it, was unusually good.
The Spanish coat-of-arms in beautiful colours was reproduced on
each plate against a background of a dark blue canopy. I must say
there were quite as many reminders of Spanish authority as I could
wish for and I frequently felt that some noble Don might walk in at
any moment and catch me living in his house.
But, it didn’t take us long to get settled down in our new domain,
and I soon ceased to regret the sea breezes and the salt baths of
Malate. Malacañan enjoyed a clean sweep of air from the river and
our open verandah was in many ways an improvement on the
gaudily glazed one that we had gradually become accustomed to in
the other house. The Malacañan verandah, being much of it roofless,
was of little use in the daytime, but on clear evenings it was the most
delightful spot I have ever seen. I began to love the tropical nights
and to feel that I never before had known what nights can be like.
The stars were so large and hung so low that they looked almost like
raised silver figures on a dark blue field. And when the moon shone—
but why try to write about tropical moonlight? The wonderful
sunsets and the moonlit nights have tied more American hearts to
Manila and the Philippines than all the country’s other charms
combined. And they are both indescribable.

TWO VIEWS OF MALACAÑAN

PALACE. THE FIRST PICTURE SHOWS
THE WIDE, ROOFLESS VERANDA
OVER THE PASIG RIVER

When I lived in Malate and could look out across the open, white-
capped bay to far-away Mt. Meriveles, I sometimes forgot I was in
the Tropics. But at Malacañan when we gazed down on the low-
lapping Pásig, glinting in the starlight, and across the rice fields on
the other side where swaying lanterns twinkled from beneath the
outline of thatched roofs, there was little to remind us that we were
Americans or that we had ever felt any air less soothing than the soft
breeze which rustled the bamboo plumes along the bank.
Our household was in every way much enlarged on our change of
residence and circumstances. There were eight or nine muchachos in
the house, two extra Chinese helpers in the kitchen, and the staff of
coachmen and gardeners increased on even a larger scale. Our stable
of ponies multiplied to sixteen, and even then there were too few for
our various needs. It is difficult for the dweller in the Temperate
Zone to realise how small an amount of work the native of the
Tropics, either man or beast, is capable of.
We thought at first that the salary attached to the office of
Governor of the Philippines was quite splendid, but we soon gave up
any idea we might have had of saving a little of it for a rainy day. Our
rainy day was upon us. It rained official obligations which we had to
meet. The mere cost of lighting Malacañan was enough to keep a
modest family in comfort. I don’t know about conditions at the
Palace now, but I imagine they have not changed much, and I do
know that Manila is a more expensive place in which to live than it
was in my time. And yet there is serious talk of reducing the salary of
the Governor-General. It seems a pity. This would place the office in
a class with Ambassadorships which nobody but rich men can
accept. The present salary, with nice management and a not too
ambitious programme, will just about cover expenses, but I feel sorry
for the wife of the Governor who must try to do what is expected of
her on less.
My cook, who had been quite independent of me at Malate,
became at Malacañan wholly unapproachable. I don’t know why, but
so it was. He occupied quarters opening on one of the courts below
and connected with the dining-room by an outside staircase up
which I was never able to inveigle him. I had to deliver my orders
from the top of the stairs and when he had listened to just as much as
he cared to hear he would disappear through the kitchen door, and
no amount of calling would bring him back. As the kitchen was an
ante-chamber to a sort of Chinese catacombs, extending over a good
part of the basement, I never ventured to follow him and I had to
swallow my wrath as best I could.
 But he was a jewel despite his eccentricities. He could produce the
most elaborate and varied buffet suppers I ever saw and I never knew
a cook who could make such a wonderful variety of cakes and fruit
tarts and cream-puffs. He took a real delight in their construction,
and for two days before a reception he would spend all his time
filling every pan in the house with patisseries elaborately iced in
every imaginable colour.
I began at once to give an afternoon reception every week and if it
hadn’t been for my disagreeable, but capable, old Ah Sing I should
have been in a constant turmoil of engagements with caterers and
confectioners. As it was, I never had to give an order, really.
“Reception Wednesday, Ah Sing,” was all that was necessary, and
except for a glance now and then to see that the muchachos were
giving the floors and the furniture a little extra polish on Wednesday
morning, the only preparations I had to make for receiving two
thousand people were to put on an embroidered muslin gown and
compose myself.
These afternoon receptions were public, our only form of
invitation being an “At Home” notice in the newspapers, and
considering the unsettled state of Manila society in those days, it is
really remarkable that we had so few unwelcome guests. There were
a great many derelicts and generally disreputable people, both
American and European, trying to better their fortunes or add to the
excitement in our agitated community, but we suffered no
unpleasant consequences from our open hospitality, though every
Wednesday the Palace was thronged and every Wednesday many
new faces appeared. Army and Navy people, civilians of every
occupation and many foreigners—Germans and British mostly—
came nearly always. I remember especially the first instalment of
American school teachers. They were, for the most part, a fine lot of
men and women who had come out with high hopes and ideals and
an enthusiastic desire to pass them on. There were some pretty girls
among them and a number of very clever looking men. I believe they
used to enjoy my parties as much as anybody in Manila. They were
homesick, no doubt, especially the girls, and I suppose the sight of so
many friendly American faces cheered them up.
The Filipinos had to have a little coaxing before they began to avail
themselves very freely of our general invitation. But by asking many
of them personally and persistently to “be sure and come
Wednesday” we prevailed on a good number to believe they were
really wanted; and after a little while there began to be as many
brown faces as white among our guests.
Speaking of school teachers reminds me that it was just about this
time that our minds were relieved of all anxiety with regard to Bob’s
and Helen’s education. My husband had wanted to send our ten-
year-old son back across the Pacific and the United States, all by
himself, to his Uncle Horace’s school in Connecticut, and I had
opposed the idea with all my might without being able to offer a
satisfactory substitute plan. But now a school for American children
was opened and they were as well taught as they would have been at
home. Moreover, Bob and Helen found a large number of congenial
companions, and I don’t think I ever saw a happier set of boys and
girls. They lived out of doors and did everything that children usually
do, but their most conspicuous performance was on the Luneta in
the evenings, where they would race around the drive on their little
ponies, six abreast, or play games all over the grass plots which were
then, and always have been, maintained chiefly for the benefit of
children, both brown and white.
My husband’s change in title and station made very little
difference in the character of his duties, but it gave him increased
authority in the performance of them. The onerous necessity for
submitting legislation to an executive whose point of view was
different from that of the Commission came to an end, and he was
able to see that such laws as the Commission passed were put in
operation without delay. Under General Chaffee the feeling on the
part of the Army against the encroachments of civil government gave
way, slowly but surely, to an attitude of, at least, friendly toleration.
It was as if they said: “Well, let them alone; we know they are wrong;
but they must learn by experience, and, after all, they mean well.”
General Chaffee and General MacArthur were two quite different
types of men. General Chaffee was less precise, less analytical.
General MacArthur had always been given to regarding everything in
its “psychological” aspect and, indeed, “psychological” was a word so
frequently on his lips that it became widely popular. General Chaffee
was impetuous; he was much less formal than his predecessor both
in thought and manner, and Mr. Taft found co-operation with him
much less difficult. He made no secret of his conviction, which was
shared by most of the Army, that civil government was being
established prematurely, but he was not unreasonable about it.
He refused at first to listen to the proposition for the establishment
of a native Constabulary. This had been the Commission’s pet project
ever since they had been in the Islands, and it was a great
disappointment to them to find that the opposition which they had
encountered in the former administration was to be continued.
What they wanted was a force of several thousand Filipinos,
trained and commanded by American Army officers, either from the
regular Army or from the volunteers. The same thing had been done
with success by the British in India and the Straits Settlements, by
the Dutch in Java and by our own General Davis in Porto Rico, and
as the insurrectionary force had dwindled to a few bands and to
scattered groups of murderers and ladrones, so acknowledged by
everybody, there was no reason why a native constabulary should not
be employed to clear these out.
This plan was among the first things submitted to General Chaffee,
but he was evidently not impressed. “Pin them down with a bayonet
for at least ten years” was a favourite expression of Army sentiment
which sometimes made the Commissioners’ explanations to the
natives rather difficult.
General Wright, on behalf of the Commission, called on General
Chaffee and was much surprised to learn that he had not even read
the Constabulary bill which had been passed some time before and
held up pending the hoped for opportunity to carry it into effect.
When General Wright explained the purport of the measure General
Chaffee said,
“I am opposed to the whole business. It seems to me that you are
trying to introduce something to take the place of my Army.”
“Why, so we are,” said General Wright. “We are trying to create a
civil police force to do the police work which we understood the
Army was anxious to be relieved of. You have announced your
purpose to concentrate the Army in the interest of economy, and to
let our civil governments stand alone to see what is in them and we
consider it necessary to have a constabulary, or some such force, to
take care of the lawless characters that are sure to be in the country
after four years of war, and especially in a country where the natives
take naturally to ladronism. The Municipal police as now organised
are not able to meet all the requirements in this regard.”
“There you are,” said General Chaffee, “you give your whole case
away.”
“I have no case to give away,” replied General Wright. “We are
trying to put our provincial governments on a basis where they will
require nothing but the moral force of the military arm, and actually
to preserve law and order through the civil arm. The people desire
peace, but they also desire protection and we intend through the civil
government to give it to them.”
The Commissioner then suggested the names of some Army
officers whose peculiar tact in handling Filipinos had marked them
as the best available men for organising and training native soldiers,
but General Chaffee was not inclined to detail them for the work, so
General Wright returned to the Commission quite cast down and
communicated to his colleagues the feeling that they were to have a
continuance of the same difficulties with which they were required to
contend under the former administration.
But a peacemaker came along in the person of General Corbin. He
spent some time with General Chaffee and then came to Malacañan
to visit us. He made a hurried, but quite extensive trip through the
Islands and gave the whole situation pretty thorough inspection.
After he left, a change was found to have come over the spirit of
affairs, and it was thought that he had managed to make clear to
everybody concerned that, while there was a military arm and a civil
arm of the government in the Philippines, they represented a single
American purpose and that that purpose had been expressed by the
administration at Washington when the Commission was sent out to
do the work it was then engaged upon.
After that General Chaffee seems not only to have been amenable
to reason, but to have been imbued with a spirit of cordiality and
helpfulness which was most gratifying to the long-harassed
Commission. To facilitate co-operation, a private telephone was
installed between the offices of Mr. Taft and the Commanding
General, and it seemed to me that my husband suddenly lost some of
the lines of worry which had begun to appear in his face.
 The Constabulary, as everybody knows, was eventually established
and perhaps no finer body of men, organised for such a purpose,
exists. It took a long time to get them enlisted, equipped and
properly drilled, but to-day they are a force which every man and
woman in the Philippines, of whatever nationality, colour, creed or
occupation, regards with peculiar satisfaction. They include corps
enlisted from nearly every tribe in the Islands, not excepting the
Moros and the Igorrotes. The Moro constabulario is distinguishable
from the Christian in that he wears a jaunty red fez with his smart
khaki uniform instead of the regulation cap, while the Igorrote
refuses trousers and contents himself with the cap, the tight jacket,
the cartridge belt and a bright “G-string.” To the Ifugao Igorrote
uniform is added a distinguishing spiral of brass which the natty
soldier wears just below the knee. It is difficult to imagine anything
more extraordinary than a “crack” company of these magnificent
barelegged Ifugaos going through dress-parade drill under the sharp
commands of an American officer. The Constabulary Band of eighty-
odd pieces, under the direction of Captain Loving, an American
negro from the Boston Conservatory of Music, is well known in
America and is generally considered one of the really great bands of
the world. All its members are Filipinos.
Press clippings and some correspondence which I have before me
remind me that even at this period there began to manifest itself in
the Taft family, and otherwheres, a mild interest in the possibility
that my husband might become President of the United States. Mr.
Taft himself treated all such “far-fetched speculation” with the
derision which he thought it deserved, but to me it did not seem at all
unreasonable. We received first a copy of the Boston Herald
containing two marked articles in parallel columns, one of which,
headed by a picture of Mr. Taft, stated that in Washington there had
been serious suggestion of his name as a Presidential candidate and
the other giving a sympathetic account of an anti-imperialistic
meeting at Faneuil Hall. We thought the two articles as “news items”
hardly warranted juxtaposition, and it seemed to us the editor was
indulging a sort of sardonic sense of humour when he placed them
so. Not that my husband was an “imperialist,” but that he was
generally so considered. Indeed, he was the most active anti-
imperialist of them all. He was doing the work of carrying out a
thoroughly anti-imperialistic policy, but he recognised the difference
between abandoning the Philippines to a certain unhappy fate and
guiding them to substantial independence founded on self-
dependence. It took a long time to get the shouters from the
housetops to accept this interpretation of our national obligation, but
there was reassurance in the fact that where our honour is involved
Americanism can always be trusted to rise above purely partisan
politics.
Mr. Taft’s mother, who took an active and very intelligent interest
in her son’s work and who sent him letters by nearly every mail
which were filled with entertaining and accurate comment on
Philippine affairs, took the suggestion of his being a Presidential
possibility quite seriously. And she did not at all approve of it.
Having seen a number of press notices about it she sat down and
wrote him a long letter in which she discussed with measured
arguments the wisdom of his keeping out of politics. At that time the
idea appealed to nothing in him except his sense of humour. He
wrote to his brother Charles: “To me such a discussion has for its
chief feature the element of humour. The idea that a man who has
issued injunctions against labour unions, almost by the bushel, who
has sent at least ten or a dozen violent labour agitators to jail, and
who is known as one of the worst judges for the maintenance of
government by injunction, could ever be a successful candidate on a
Presidential ticket, strikes me as intensely ludicrous; and had I the
slightest ambition in that direction I hope that my good sense would
bid me to suppress it. But, more than this, the horrors of a modern
Presidential campaign and the political troubles of the successful
candidate for President, rob the office of the slightest attraction for
me. I have but one ambition, and if that cannot be satisfied I am
content to return to the practice of the law with reasonable assurance
that if my health holds out I can make a living, and make Nellie and
the children more comfortable than I could if I went to Washington.”
This letter is dated August 27, 1901, and was written on a Spanish
steamer which the Commission had taken from Aparri, on the north
coast of Luzon, after they finished the last of the long trips they had
to make for the purpose of organising civil government in the
provinces.
It was just after they returned from this trip; just when things were
at their brightest; when everything seemed to be developing so
rapidly and our hopes were running high, that we were shaken by the
appalling news of the attack on President McKinley. We had kept
luncheon waiting for Mr. Taft until it seemed useless to wait any
longer and we were at table when he came in. He looked so white and
stunned and helpless that I was frightened before he could speak.
Then he said, “The President has been shot.”
I suppose that throughout the United States the emotions of
horror and grief were beyond expression, but I cannot help thinking
that to the Americans in the Philippines the shock came with more
overwhelming force than to any one else. Mr. McKinley was our chief
in a very special sense. He was the director of our endeavours and
the father of our destinies. It was he who had sent the civil officials
out there and it was on the strength of his never failing support that
we had relied in all our troubles. It might, indeed, have been Mr.
Root in whose mind the great schemes for the development of the
islands and their peoples had been conceived, but Mr. Root exercised
his authority through the wise endorsement of the President and it
was to the President that we looked for sanction or criticism of every
move that was made. Then, too, the extraordinary sweetness of his
nature inspired in every one with whom he came in close contact a
strong personal affection, and we had reason to feel this more than
most people. Truly, it was as if the foundations of our world had
crumbled under us.
But he was not dead; and on the fact that he was strong and clean
we began to build hopes. Yet the hush which fell upon the
community on the day that he was shot was not broken until a couple
of days before he died when we received word that he was
recovering. We were so far away that we could not believe anybody
would send us such a cable unless it were founded on a practical
certainty, and our “Thank God!” was sufficiently fervent to dispel all
the gloom that had enveloped us. Then came the cable announcing
his death. I need not dwell on that.
Mr. Taft and Mr. Roosevelt knew each other very well. They had
been in Washington together years before, Mr. Taft as Solicitor
General, Mr. Roosevelt as Civil Service Commissioner, and they had
corresponded with some frequency since we had been in Manila. So,
in so far as the work in the Philippines was concerned, my husband
knew where the new President’s sympathies were and he had no
fears on that score. At the same time he was most anxious to have
Mr. Root continued as Secretary of War in order that there might not
be any delay or radical change in carrying out the plans which had
been adopted and put in operation under his direction. All activities
suffered a sort of paralysis from the crushing blow of the President’s
assassination, but the press of routine work continued. We were very
much interested in learning that a great many Filipinos, clever
politicians as they are, thought that after Mr. McKinley’s death Mr.
Bryan would become President, and that, after all, they would get
immediate independence.
Then came the awful tragedy of Balangiga. It happened only a few
days after the President died, while our nerves were still taut, and
filled us all with unspeakable horror intensified by the first actual
fear we had felt since we had been in the Philippine Islands.
Company “C” of the 9th Infantry, stationed at the town of Balangiga
on the island of Samar, was surprised at breakfast, without arms and
at a considerable distance from their quarters, and fifty of them were
massacred. About thirty fought their way bare handed through the
mob, each man of which had a bolo or a gun, and lived to tell the tale.
It was a disaster so ghastly in its details, so undreamed of under the
conditions of almost universal peace which had been established,
that it created absolute panic. Men began to go about their everyday
occupations in Manila carrying pistols conspicuously displayed, and
half the people one met could talk of nothing else but their
conviction that the whole archipelago was a smouldering volcano
and that we were all liable to be murdered in our beds any night. Of
course this made the Army officers more certain than ever that the
Islands should have remained under military control indefinitely,
and I cannot deny that, at the time, their arguments seemed to have
some foundation. It was a frightful nervous strain and it took several
months of tranquillity to restore confidence. If it had been a regular
engagement in which the Americans had sustained a reverse it could
have been accepted with some philosophy, but it was a plain
massacre of a company of defenceless men by many times their
number who had gotten into the town with the consent of the
American authorities, and in conspiracy with the local headman and
the native parish priest, on the pretext of bringing in for surrender a
band of insurrectos.
 The man, Lucban, who was in command of the Samar ladrones
who committed this atrocity, is now a prominent politico in Manila,
and it is interesting to know that only last year, in a campaign
speech, he referred with dramatic intensity to “our glorious victory of
Balangiga.” He was appealing to an ignorant electorate, many of
whom, as he knew, wore the scar of the awful Katipunan “blood
pact,” but it is just to record that the average Filipino is not proud of
the Balangiga “victory.”
Shortly before these unhappy events my sister Maria was called
back to America by the illness of our mother, and I was left to face
the tragic excitements of the month of September without her
comforting companionship. By October I began to feel that I would
have to get out of the Philippine Islands or suffer a nervous
breakdown, so my husband and I agreed that it would be well for me
to “run up to China,” as they express it out there. Running up to
China at that time of year meant getting out of tropic heat into
bracing autumn weather with a nip of real winter in it, and there was
nothing that I needed more.
Mrs. Wright and Mrs. Moses were both anxious to see something
of China before leaving the Orient, and as this seemed an excellent
opportunity to make the trip, they decided to go with me. The Boxer
Insurrection had just been suppressed and the Dowager Empress
had not yet returned from the West, whither she had fled during the
siege of Peking. We were used to the alarums of war and we thought
we were likely to see more of China “from the inside” than if we
visited the country during a period of complete calm. Then there
were wonderful tales of valuable “loot” which interested us. Not
necessarily illegitimate loot, but curios and art treasures in the hands
of Chinese themselves who were selling things at ridiculously low
figures and, sometimes, with a fascinating air of great mystery. There
is some allurement in the idea of bargaining for priceless porcelains,
ivories, silks and Russian sables behind closed and double-locked
doors, in the dark depths of some wretched Chinese hovel. Our Army
officers who had helped to relieve Peking brought us stories of this
kind of adventure, and I secretly hoped that we should be able to
have just some such experience. But being the wives of American
officials I thought likely we should be “taken care of” every hour of
every twenty-four. And so we were.
 We sailed to Shanghai and went from there straight to Peking,
where we became the guests of Colonel and Mrs. Robertson, who had
gone in with the American troops in the Allied Armies and were
quartered in no less a place than the Temple of Heaven. The casual
tourist looking now upon that glorious collection of ancestral shrines
would find it difficult to believe that they once served as barracks for
American soldiers. Most people who visit the Temple of Heaven find
in it an atmosphere of peace and serenity such as is achieved by few
structures in the world, and to have this deep calm invaded by
business-like “foreign-devil” troops must have ruffled the spirits of
the high gods. But the soldiers had to be quartered somewhere and
this great, clean, tree-sheltered enclosure in the heart of the Chinese
city offered ample space.
Mr. Conger was then our Minister to China, and after spending a
few very busy days sightseeing we went to the Legation to visit him.
The Legation quarter, which had been laid in ruins during the Boxer
troubles, had not yet begun to assume an aspect of orderliness, and
many were the evidences of the weeks of horror through which the
besieged foreign representatives had lived.
As the Empress Dowager and her court had not yet returned, we
hoped to be able to see all the mysteries of the Forbidden City, but
order had been restored to a point where it was possible to make the
palaces once more “forbidden,” so we were shown only enough to
whet our curiosity. But the wonderful walls and the temples, the
long, unbelievable streets and the curious life of the people were
sufficient to save us from any feeling of disappointment in our visit.
At a dinner given for us by our Minister we met a number of men and
women who had been through the siege, and I sat next to Sir Robert
Hart, of the Imperial Chinese Customs, the most interesting man,
perhaps, that the great occidental-oriental co-operation has ever
produced.
When we returned to Shanghai on our way down from Peking I
was greeted by two cablegrams. It just happened that I opened them
in the order of their coming and the first one contained the
information that my husband was very ill and said that I had better
return at once to Manila, while the second read that he was much
better and that there was no cause for alarm. There was no way of
getting to Manila for several days, because there were no boats going.
So I decided to take a trip up the Yangtse River on the house-boat
belonging to the wife of the American Consul. If I had been doing
this for pleasure instead of for the purpose of “getting away from
myself” I should have enjoyed it exceedingly, but as it was I have but
a vague recollection of a very wide and very muddy river; great
stretches of clay flats, broken here and there by little clumps of round
mounds which I knew were Chinese graves, and bordered by distant,
low hills; an occasional quaint grey town with uptilted tile roofs; and
a few graceful but dreary-looking pagodas crowning lonesome hill-
tops. And in addition to all of this there was a seething mass of very
dirty and very noisy humanity which kept out of our way and
regarded us with anything but friendly looks.
I had left my husband apparently perfectly well, but I subsequently
learned that the night after I left Manila he developed the first
symptoms of his illness. It was diagnosed at first as dengue fever, a
disease quite common in the Philippines which, though exceedingly
disagreeable, is not regarded as dangerous. It was about two weeks
before a correct diagnosis was made, and it was then discovered that
he was suffering from an abscess which called for a serious
emergency operation. He was taken to the First Reserve Army
hospital and the operation was performed by Dr. Rhoads, the Army
surgeon who afterward became his aide when he was President.
The children must have been much frightened. They had never
seen their father ill before, and he told me afterward that he should
never forget the way they looked as he was being carried out of
Malacañan on a stretcher borne by six stalwart American policemen.
They were all huddled together in the great hall as he passed
through, and while Bob and Charlie were gazing at the proceedings
in open-eyed astonishment, Helen was weeping.
For twenty-four hours after the operation the doctors were not at
all certain that their patient would live, nor did their anxiety end at
that time. The abscess was of long growth, the wound had to be made
a terrible one, and there was great danger of blood poisoning. Mr.
Taft rallied but a second operation was necessary. By the time I
reached Manila he was well on the way to recovery, though even then
there was no prospect of his being able to move for many weeks to
come.
 He used to lie on his cot in the hospital and recite to his visitors a
verse of Kipling’s which he thought fitted his case exactly:
“Now it is not well for the white man
To hurry the Aryan brown,
For the white man riles and the Aryan smiles,
And it weareth the white man down.
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white
With the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear: ‘A fool lies here
Who tried to hurry the East.’”

It was decided at once by everybody, including the doctors, Mr.

Root and President Roosevelt, that Mr. Taft must leave the Islands as
soon as he was able to travel, and there were several reasons, besides
those connected with health, why it seemed best for us to return to
the United States. The principal one was that Congress was
becoming very active with regard to Philippine matters, and as Mr.
Taft was anxious that the right kind of legislation should be passed,
he wished to go to Washington and present the facts about the
situation as he had found them during his long hand-to-hand
struggle with the problem. Mr. Root cabled him that his presence in
Washington was necessary and granted him a three months’ leave of
absence from his duties as Governor, while General Wright was
appointed vice-Governor to fill his place for the time being.
Mr. Worcester was the ranking member of the Commission, but
my husband felt that he had not quite the same talent for genially
dealing with every kind of person, whether evasive Filipino or
dictatorial Army officer, which General Wright so conspicuously
displayed, and, moreover, Mr. Worcester was entirely engrossed with
the problems of his department, which included health and
sanitation and the satisfactory adjustment of the difficulties
connected with the government of the non-Christian tribes. These
were matters which appealed to Mr. Worcester’s scientific mind and
which he vastly preferred to the uncongenial task of administering
the routine of government, so he was only too willing not to be
encumbered with the duties of Governor. This, I understand, was Mr.
Worcester’s attitude throughout his thirteen years as Secretary of the
Interior, during which time he was always the ranking Commissioner
with the first right, under a promotion system, to the Governorship
whenever a vacancy occurred in that office.
The transport Grant was assigned for our use by General Chaffee,
and we made our preparations for an extended absence.
One incident of my husband’s convalescence in the hospital I think
I must relate. In an adjoining room General Frederick Funston was
recovering from an operation for appendicitis and he was sufficiently
far advanced to be able to walk around, so he used to call on Mr. Taft
quite often. Now General Funston, for the benefit of those who have
no mental picture of him, is by no means gigantic. He has the bearing
of a seven-foot soldier, but the truth is he is not more than five feet
three or four inches in height.
One day there was an earthquake of long duration and extended
vibration which would have been sufficient to destroy Manila had it
not lacked a certain upward jerk calculated to unbalance swaying
walls. One gets used to earthquakes in the Orient in a way, but no
amount of familiarity can make the sensation a pleasant one. My
husband was alone at the time and he had decided to hold hard to his
bed and let the roof come down on him if it had to. The hospital was
a one story wooden building and he really thought he was as safe in it
as he would be anywhere. Moreover, he was quite unable to walk, so
his fortitude could hardly be called voluntary, but he had scarcely
had time to steel himself for the worst when his door was thrown
open and in rushed General Funston.
“We must carry out the Governor!” he shouted; “we must carry out
the Governor!”
“But how are you going to do that, General?” asked Mr. Taft.
He knew quite well that General Funston, in his weakened
condition, would be incapable of carrying an infant very far.
“Oh, I have my orderly with me,” responded the doughty General,
and by this time he had begun to get a firm grasp on the mattress
while behind him hurried a soldier, shorter even than his chief, but
with the same look of dauntless determination in his eye.
In spite of the straining on the rafters, Mr. Taft burst out laughing
and flatly refused to let them try to move him. Fortunately for them
all the upward jerk necessary to bring down the roof didn’t occur, so
there is no way of telling whether or not, for once in his life, General
Funston started something that he couldn’t finish.
We sailed from Manila on Christmas Eve, 1901, and, much as I had
enjoyed my life and experiences in our new world of the Philippines,
I was glad to see the tropic shores fade away and to feel that we were
to have a few months in our own land and climate, and among our
own old friends, before I sighted them again.
 CHAPTER XI
A TRIP TO ROME

The winter of 1902, the greater part of which we spent in

Cincinnati, is memorable only as a period of bereavement and
protracted illnesses. Perhaps such a record has no place in a
narrative wherein it is my wish to dwell on pleasant memories only,
or, at least, to touch as lightly as possible upon those incidents
which, for one’s peace, may better be forgotten, but a whole winter
filled with grief and worry is not so easily torn from the leaves of the
calendar rolled back.
In the first place, when I left Manila in December, 1901, I was very
near to a nervous breakdown. This was due to the long strain of a
peculiarly exacting official life in a trying climate, and an added
weight of uneasiness about my husband’s illness.
Then, too, my mother was very ill. She had suffered a stroke of
paralysis the year before from which she had never rallied and I was
extremely anxious to be with her in Cincinnati.
When we arrived in San Francisco a terrible mid-winter storm was
sweeping the country from one end to the other and we were strongly
advised to delay our trip across the continent, but we were both eager
to go on so we started East at once over the Union Pacific.
When we passed Ogden we found ourselves in the midst of the
worst blizzard I ever saw. The snow piled up ahead of us, delaying us
hour by hour; the bitter wind fairly shook the heavy train; and to
turn mere discomfort into misery the water pipes in the cars froze
solid and we were left without heat of any kind. There was nothing to
do but to go to bed; but even so, with all the blankets available piled
on top of us, we shivered through interminable hours while the train
creaked and puffed and struggled over the icy tracks.
 When we reached Omaha I received a telegram telling me that my
mother had died the day before, and I found it no longer possible to
brace myself against the inevitable collapse. We hurried on to
Cincinnati and arrived in time for my mother’s funeral, but I was too
ill to be present. It was two months before I began to recover.
In the meantime Mr. Taft left us and went on to Washington for
consultation with the President and Mr. Root and to appear before
the Philippine Committees of the House and Senate which were then
conducting minute inquiries into conditions in the Islands
preparatory to passing a much needed governmental bill. For a
whole month he was subjected to a hostile cross-examination, but he
was able to place before the Committees more first-hand and
accurate information on the subject of their deliberations than they
had theretofore received. This was exactly what he wanted to come to
the United States for, and he would greatly have enjoyed it had he
been in his usual form, but he was not. During his stay in
Washington he was the guest of Secretary and Mrs. Root and only
their friendly care and solicitude enabled him to continue so long. In
March he was compelled to return to Cincinnati for another
operation, the third in five months. Everything considered, it seemed
to me the Taft family had fallen upon evil days.
However, the weeks passed, I began to improve, and as soon as my
husband had fairly set his feet on earth again we began to make plans
for our return to the Philippines. There could be no thought of
abandoning the work in the Islands just when it was beginning to
assume an ordered and encouraging aspect, nor was it possible just
then to shift the responsibility to other shoulders. This would have
been too much like “changing horses in the middle of a stream.”
My husband was able while he was in Washington to present to
President Roosevelt and Secretary Root a very clear outline of
Philippine affairs, together with such details as could never be
conveyed by cable, and the inevitable conclusion reached was that no
solution of the problem was possible which did not include the
settlement of the Friar controversy. The four monastic orders, the
Franciscan, the Dominican, the Augustinian and the Recoleto, which
held four hundred thousand acres of the best agricultural land in the
Islands, had won the lasting enmity of the Filipino people and it was
absolutely impossible to establish permanent peace while the Friars
remained and persisted in an attempt to return to their parishes.
Hundreds of them were living in practical imprisonment in the
monasteries of Manila, and that they should not be allowed to return
to their churches throughout the Islands, from which they had been
driven, was the one stand taken by the Filipinos from which they
could not by any form of persuasion be moved.
The solution of the difficulty proposed by Mr. Taft and his
colleagues in the Philippine government was that the United States
purchase the Friars’ lands and turn them into a public domain on the
condition that the orders objected to by the people be withdrawn
from the Islands.
As soon as President Roosevelt recognised the importance of
accomplishing these things he decided, with characteristic
directness, that somebody should go at once to Rome and open
negotiations with the Vatican, and after considering various men for
this delicate mission he concluded that Mr. Taft was the man best
fitted to undertake it.
The prospect of another novel experience was exceedingly
gratifying to me and I began at once to look forward with interest to a
renewal of my acquaintance with Rome and to the trip back to the
East by the Suez Canal, the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean which,
according to Kipling, “sits an’ smiles, so sof’, so bright, so bloomin’
blue.” So my feet no longer lagged in my preparations for a long trip
with my three children and another extended residence in the
tropics.
To assist Mr. Taft in his negotiations with the Vatican, and to make
up a dignified and formidable looking Commission, the President
appointed Bishop O’Gorman of the Catholic diocese of South Dakota,
and General James F. Smith, at that time a member of the Philippine
judiciary and in later years Philippine Commissioner and Governor-
General of the Islands. His rank of General he attained as an officer
of volunteers in the Army of Pacification in the Philippines, but, a
lawyer in the beginning, after he was appointed to the Bench he
became known as Judge Smith, and Judge we always called him. He
is an Irish Catholic Democrat and a man of very sane views and
exceptional ability. Major John Biddle Porter was made Secretary-
Interpreter to the Commission, and Bishop Brent, Episcopal Bishop
of the Philippines, on his way to Manila, decided to go with Mr. Taft,