Abstract
ILLUSION OF WOODPECKERS AND BEARS.—Mr. J. D. Pasteur, Inspector of the Post and Telegraphic Service at Java, communicated to Dr. F. A. Jentink, in July last, the following very curious and interesting facts about woodpeckers, who, under the illusion that the buzzing sound so apparent on applying the ear to telegraph poles is caused by the vigorous efforts of gnawing or boring insects, make, large holes in the timber, on a hopeless chase after such. He incloses a piece of a telegraph pole made of teak-wood, with two woodpeckers (Picus anaiis), from the Kediri Residency, Java. The wood, which is of iron hardness, is perforated with rather large holes near the place where the insulators had been attached. Although Inspector Pasteur passes thousands of telegraph poles under view each year, only in a very few cases-has he found any damage done to them by woodpeckers and, until now, the damage done has always been on the living kapok trees (Eriodendron anfractuosum), which are used in Java for this purpose. The piece of telegraph pole now sent is the only instance known to him of damage being done to the sound and very hard poles of the teak (Tectona grandis). Besides the above-mentioned woodpecker, from time to time the rare little Piciis moluccensis was seen also among the others at work. Mr. Pasteur remarks on the great rarity of such a phenomenon: in the Paris Electrical Exhibition of 1881 there was exhibited, as a great curiosity, a telegraph pole sent from Norway, which was perforated by a hole of 7 centimetres in diameter. The Norwegian Administration was for a long time uncertain to what cause to ascribe this damage done to poles, which were otherwise quite sound, till a mere chance at last revealed woodpeckers at work. In Norway, too, another equally remarkable case of damage had been noted as done to telegraph poles by the large stones, which are heaped round their base to insure their stability in the ground, being removed and scattered, apparently without any reason. This, which was for a length of time inexplicable, was at last found to be the work of bears, who apparently mistook the sound in the timber for the buzzing of a swarm of bees. It is too much to expect of either bears or woodpeckers that they should be versed in the ways of modern science. (Notes from the Leyden Museum, October 1890, p. 209.)
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Biological Notes. Nature 43, 184–185 (1890). https://doi.org/10.1038/043184b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/043184b0