The Wonders of Instinct

by Jean-Henri Fabre

Chapters in the psychology of insects; translated by Alexander Teixeira De Mattos

Genres: Nature

164 pages, Paperback

Published October 1, 2007

About the author

Fabre was born in Saint-Léons in Aveyron, France. Fabre was largely an autodidact, owing to the poverty of his family. Nevertheless, he acquired a primary teaching certificate at the young age of 19 and began teaching at the college of Ajaccio, Corsica, called Carpentras. In 1852, he taught at the lycée in Avignon.

Fabre went on to accomplish many scholarly achievements. He was a popular teacher, physicist, chemist and botanist. However, he is probably best known for his findings in the field of entomology, the study of insects, and is considered by many to be the father of modern entomology. Much of his enduring popularity is due to his marvelous teaching ability and his manner of writing about the lives of insects in biographical form, which he preferred to a clinically detached, journalistic mode of recording. In doing so he combined what he called "my passion for scientific truth" with keen observations and an engaging, colloquial style of writing. Fabre noted: Others again have reproached me with my style, which has not the solemnity, nay, better, the dryness of the schools. They fear lest a page that is read without fatigue should not always be the expression of the truth. Were I to take their word for it, we are profound only on condition of being obscure.

Over the years he wrote a series of texts on insects and arachnids that are collectively known as the Souvenirs Entomologiques. Fabre's influence is felt in the later works of fellow naturalist Charles Darwin, who called Fabre "an inimitable observer". Fabre, however, rejected Darwin's theory of evolution; on the other hand he was not a Biblical creationist either but assumed a saltationist origin of biodiversity.

In one of Fabre's most famous experiments, he arranged processionary caterpillars to form a continuous loop around the edge of a pot. As each caterpillar instinctively followed the silken trail of the caterpillars in front of it, the group moved around in a circle for seven days.

Jean-Henri Fabre's last home and office, the Harmas de Fabre in Provence stands today as a museum devoted to his life and works.

The site of his birth, at St Léons, near Millau is now the site of Micropolis, a tourist attraction dedicated to popularising entomology and a museum on his life.

Reviews

[Remy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is my second Fabre book, although the distinction might be rather artificial; as I understand it, all of his “books” are just judicious selections from his enormous Souvenirs Entomologiques. The entries in this one suit the title’s theme, instinct, quite wonderfully. Fabre, in his usual poetic form, really makes his subjects shine. Any non-entomothusiasts must find themselves rather surprised to care so much about these seemingly simple creatures.

Foremost, one learns that they aren't nearly so simple after all. This is the only time I've ever been hesitant to spoil the surprises in a non-fiction book; I’ll bite the bullet, and hopefully no one will mind if I spoil just one. Did you know that many bees and wasps can determine the sex of their offspring at will? Even to the extent of laying only males or only females? Doubly as impressive, they do it right at the precipice of the laying. Apparently, they decide at a moment’s notice which sex is more appropriate given the environmental conditions at hand.

The means Fabre employs to discover this fact are ingenious, not to mention observant to the point of obstinacy. As best as my limited education and access to Wikipedia can determine, his results seem to be corroborated today, and explained as a quirk of some haplodiploidy based organisms. I’m not sure how much of that sort of thing was understood by the time of this book; so far I've been unable to find a date for this specific selection. Regardless, it’s an impressive discovery.

All throughout, Fabre frequently manages to find some humbling parallel between the lives/habits of his insects and the lives/habits of his fellow humans. In politics and sociology, he seems entirely uncritical of ideas I naively imagined to be modern. Perhaps the utterly alien behaviors of his cohort familiarized him with other ways one might coexist with one’s neighbors. I can’t say I know much about 19th century France, but it seems implausible that Fabre should be representative of his peers from that time and place. In other words, he should get more recognition than he has to date.

[Mariangel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Daniel: Este libro trata de Fabre experimentando con saltamontes, empusas, capricornios, escarabajos enterradores, moscardones, procesionarias, tarantulas, arañas, eumenes, abejas albañiles, lucíernagas, y mariposas de la col. Me gustó cuando las procesionarias iban en circulos, cuando Fabre experimentaba con las abejas albañiles, y cuando experimentaba con las mariposas de la col.

ENGLISH: Fabre selected a few of his best experiments from "Souvenirs entomologiques" to compile this book. He made pine processionaries march in a circle on the rim of a pot for a whole week, without their realizing that they had no leader to find the way; he tested how burying beetles manage to bury dead animals on different types of terrain; he corrected errors in contemporary book which said that the parasite of the cabbage butterfly inoculates the caterpillars, by setting in a tube wasps and caterpillars (which were ignored) and in another waps with the butterfly eggs, which were inoculated. He constructed a whole town of nesting tubes of different sizes in his office for mason bees, and conducted many experiments on how the mother selects the sex of the egg she's lying as a function of the space available for the larva. In addition to the interest of his discoveries, Fabre's writing style is wonderful.

[Stefania · Rating 5 out of 5]

Il libro è composto da una ventina di capitoli, ognuno dedicato a un diverso artropode, principalmente insetti. "Dedicato" nel senso massimo, l'autore infatti si profonde in lodi verso questi meravigliosi animali e lo fa con una prosa poetica ma rigorosa e scientificamente accurata. Approssimatosi alla fine della sua vita, Fabre raccoglie tutta la sua abilità per raccontare le sue osservazioni e i suoi esperimenti. Questo saggio è stato pubblicato nel 1918 e rappresenta quindi una delle sue ultime opere, nella quale ho trovato opinioni e pensieri che ora, nel 2025, stanno finalmente trovando maggiore seguito. L'entomologo è un pioniere dello studio del comportamento animale basato sull'osservazione diretta, in particolare per animali così bisfrattati come gli insetti. Questa sua curiosità ha aperto la strada per una maggiore consapevolezza verso l'intelligenza degli artropodi. Leggere della cura e dedizione con la quale svelava meraviglie e limiti del clade più numeroso (in termini di numero di specie e di numero di individui) mi ha scaldato il cuore, ho apprezzato anche il suo ragionamento critico verso ciò che lui, e l'homo sapiens in generale, non è in grado di spiegare. Lo sarà in futuro, o forse no? Forse non deve spiegare tutto.
In definitiva, un saggio che mi ha lasciato una voglia matta di approfondire il "minimondo", di scoprire tutte le opere del grande entomologo.