In the case of the Lycosa, the job is riskier.  She has naught to serve her but her courage and her fangs and is obliged to leap upon the formidable prey, to master it by her dexterity, to annihilate it, in a measure, by her swift-slaying talent.

Annihilate is the word:  the Bumble-bees whom I draw from the fatal hole are a sufficient proof.  As soon as that shrill buzzing, which I called the death-song, ceases, in vain I hasten to insert my forceps:  I always bring out the insect dead, with slack proboscis and limp legs.  Scarce a few quivers of those legs tell me that it is a quite recent corpse.  The Bumble-bee’s death is instantaneous.  Each time that I take a fresh victim from the terrible slaughter-house, my surprise is renewed at the sight of its sudden immobility.

Nevertheless, both animals have very nearly the same strength; for I choose my Bumble-bees from among the largest (Bombus hortorum and B. terrestris).  Their weapons are almost equal:  the Bee’s dart can bear comparison with the Spider’s fangs; the sting of the first seems to me as formidable as the bite of the second.  How comes it that the Tarantula always has the upper hand and this moreover in a very short conflict, whence she emerges unscathed?  There must certainly be some cunning strategy on her part.  Subtle though her poison may be, I cannot believe that its mere injection, at any point whatever of the victim, is enough to produce so prompt a catastrophe.  The ill-famed rattlesnake does not kill so quickly, takes hours to achieve that for which the Tarantula does not require a second.  We must, therefore, look for an explanation of this sudden death to the vital importance of the point attacked by the Spider, rather than to the virulence of the poison.

What is this point?  It is impossible to recognize it on the Bumble-bees.  They enter the burrow; and the murder is committed far from sight.  Nor does the lens discover any wound upon the corpse, so delicate are the weapons that produce it.  One would have to see the two adversaries engage in a direct contest.  I have often tried to place a Tarantula and a Bumble-bee face to face in the same bottle.  The two animals mutually flee each other, each being as much upset as the other at its captivity.  I have kept them together for twenty-four hours, without aggressive display on either side.  Thinking more of their prison than of attacking each other, they temporize, as though indifferent.  The experiment has always been fruitless.  I have succeeded with Bees and Wasps, but the murder has been committed at night and has taught me nothing.  I would find both insects, next morning, reduced to a jelly under the Spider’s mandibles.  A weak prey is a mouthful which the Spider reserves for the calm of the night.  A prey capable of resistance is not attacked in captivity.  The prisoner’s anxiety cools the hunter’s ardour.