The Islanders (5 page)
When Aubrac and his team of four young assistants arrived at the chain of thirty-five islands they and the operational staff set up a working base camp on one of the islands (then unnamed). It was not until some time later that they began to realize the island they had chosen was completely uninhabited.
Aubrac’s journal records the discovery in what seems now to be an unexcited way, considering the reason for it that he later established. At first the team made the assumption that there would be settlements somewhere, if not on that particular island then certainly on some of the other thirty-four islands. They also kept in mind past experiences of remote islands, where indigenous people had been frightened of the new arrivals and kept out of their way. However, the team gradually realized they must have stumbled across a genuinely uninhabited part of the Archipelago.
Later explorations were to establish that nowhere else in the huge group of islands was there any evidence of recent habitation.
For Aubrac, the new islands were an entomologist’s dream come true. Soon after he arrived he communicated to the head of his university department that his life’s work now lay ahead of him. This turned out to be literally true, as he was never again to leave the chain of islands.
The number of new species of insects catalogued by Aubrac is simply vast – more than one thousand were identified within a year of his starting work. Although he was to die at a relatively young age, Aubrac is recognized as the leading zoologist in his field. He was awarded a posthumous Inclair Laureateship for his work. There is a monument to him in Grande Aubrac Town, which in the modern age is the administrative capital of the group.
Aubrac’s name will be forever identified with one particular insect, not for its discovery as such but for most of the detailed research work that was to follow. The incident that began his research was an unfortunate contact by one of his assistants, a herpetologist named Hadimá Thryme. She was accidentally infected by one of the insects. Aubrac describes in his journal what happened to this woman:
In the early evening Hadimá wanted to observe her tree-snakes again, but no one else was free to accompany her. The snakes have a deadly venom, but Hadimá knows what she is doing and she carries antidotes so I gave her permission to go alone. She said the snakes are always torpid in the evenings. She had been gone for less than half an hour when her emergency bleeper went off. I took the GP vehicle, and Dake [Dr D. L. Lei, the toxicologist on Aubrac’s team] and I drove at high speed to the site. We assumed of course that one of the snakes had bitten her.
Hadimá was barely conscious when we found her, and obviously suffering intense pain. We examined her quickly but could not find any sign of a bite, even in the area of her right ankle – she was bent double, holding the ankle tightly. Dake Lei administered about 2ccs of anti-crotalic serum, effective against most haemotoxic or haemolytic reptile venoms. We then put her inside the vehicle and brought her back to the base as quickly as possible.
We began emergency medical procedures, with Antalya [Dr A. Benger, the team physician] taking charge, and Dake and I assisting.
Although by this time Hadimá was only semi-conscious, she managed to convey to us that the bite was definitely in her ankle. Still we could find no puncture mark. The skin was slightly reddened, which we assumed was partly caused by the tight grip she had had on it. To be on the safe side, Antalya made an incision in that area, and a vacuum pump was pressed against it to try to evacuate any venom that remained. We applied a tourniquet above the knee. Antalya injected more serum, this time including anti-bothropic serum. Hadimá kept resurfacing into consciousness, and screaming in agony. She complained that the left side of her body was giving pain. The electronic monitors revealed that her blood pressure and heart-rate were both dangerously high. She said the crown of her head was hurting as if a knife blade had been thrust into it from behind. Her right foreleg swelled up, and became darkly discoloured. This was an indication of haemolysis: the haemoglobin in her blood was breaking down. Antalya injected antivenin, in an attempt to halt it.
The swelling continued to spread. Blood was flowing rapidly from the incision on Hadimá’s ankle and she complained that it was almost impossible to breathe, even with applied oxygen. In a moment of rationality, Hadimá said she was certain a snake had not bitten her. She remembered brushing against a large black sphere on the ground, which she had thought was a seed pod. It was covered in short and bristly hairs.
This was familiar. I hurried to my office and collected some photographs taken a few days ago. I showed them to Hadimá and although she was clearly slipping into semi-consciousness again, she instantly confirmed that it was one of those she had touched.
I knew then that she had been poisoned by an insect, rolled into a protective sphere. I have not yet had time to do anything more than simply note the presence of these large arthropods, and take the photographs. I have witnessed the defensive rolling several times. The insects are everywhere around us, and although in an entomological sense they are fascinating, we find them repulsive to look at and sense a bite or a sting from one of them would be at least unpleasant and possibly dangerous. We are all keeping a safe distance from them until I have a chance to investigate them properly. I am planning to capture a few in the near future and examine them properly. Fortunately, the insects seem to feel as wary of us as we are of them, and scuttle off if we surprise them. I am now certain Hadimá must have brushed against one of them.
Her pulse started to vary wildly, from below 50 bpm to above 130 bpm. She voided her bladder incontinently and the liquid was highly coloured with blood. She complained again about the pain and appeared to be about to lose full consciousness. She was deathly pale and her entire body was covered in sweat. Antalya injected more stimulants, coagulants and antivenins into her. She made small incisions on Hadimá’s arms and legs, to attempt to relieve the acute swelling. Blood, lymph and pale liquid gushed from these incisions. Her right leg was darkly discoloured for its entire length. Briefly, her pulse could not be detected and we carried out emergency resuscitation procedures. Further stimulants and coagulants went into her and although they increased the physical pain they restored her to consciousness. More discoloration was developing: on her arms, her abdomen and her neck. Both eyes were bloodshot. She vomited repeatedly, bringing up blood. Antalya administered further antivenin serums. Hadimá’s neck and throat had swollen to the point where she could not speak, and was barely able to breathe, with or without the oxygen mask.
Fifteen minutes into her ordeal, a deep calm suddenly came over Hadimá and we feared the worst. I could see the way Antalya was reacting – it had become a matter of life support. Hadimá’s pulse first accelerated, then calmed down again. She began to tremble, at first just her hands and feet, but then her whole body was shaken by tremors. The oxygen mask came off and Dake had to hold it over her mouth and nose by main force. We all felt we were losing her. But then she opened her eyes, and when Dake offered her some water she took it orally and kept it down. Gradually, the tremors left her. Her limbs were still discoloured and swollen. She shouted with pain if we touched her anywhere.
At the point where the sting or bite had been made a series of large blebs had appeared. These were hard to the touch but gave the patient no extra pain, so Antalya experimentally lanced one of them. A pale fluid filled with tiny black particles issued. Dake quickly examined these particles under a microscope, then on his urgent advice Antalya lanced the remainder of the blisters. The fluid that issued was carefully collected and stored in glass flasks.
Within another half an hour Hadimá Thryme was able to breathe unaided. For three days, under constant monitoring and light sedation, she was allowed to sleep while being fed intravenously. The swelling gradually went down, although the acute pains continued.
Aubrac ordered an emergency vessel from Tumo, and Hadimá was evacuated back to the university hospital. A few weeks later the team, who had remained on station, were relieved to hear that she had recovered from the poisoning and that all traces of the toxins were gone from her. She underwent a long convalescence, and afterwards said she did not wish to return to the expedition. She was replaced by Fran Herkker, a herpetologist from the main zoo in Muriseay Town, who arrived at the base a few weeks after the attack on Hadimá.
After Hadimá’s departure, Aubrac set aside his pleasurable pursuit of butterflies, beetles, wasps, and so on, and concentrated almost entirely on research into the insect that had stung her.
In the first place, knowing it was a new species, he named it after Hadimá and gave it the scientific name
Buthacus thrymeii
. The genus was as yet tentative, because in general shape and ferocity the thryme was close to a scorpion, having two large and muscular pincers carried beside its head, and a curved tail rising over the body, tipped with a poisonous sting. But scorpions were of the arachnida class, having eight legs, while the thryme had only six. It was also significantly larger than any scorpion: most adult thrymes he eventually managed to capture were fifteen to twenty centimetres in length, but others he saw in the wild, which eluded him, appeared to be thirty or forty centimetres in length. From Jaem Aubrac’s journal:
We have at last managed to capture three thrymes, after several weeks of danger and frustration. It took trial and error, and a substantial degree of risk to myself and Dake. Naturally we were wearing protective gear, but the daytime temperatures on this island are suffocating. We have discovered that thrymes are most active when the rains come, which is every afternoon for about three hours. There is no lessening of temperature during the rains, so any physical movement across the muddy ground is exhausting.
The particular problems of trying to trap a thryme (setting aside the fact that the mature insect is one of the most venomous insects I have ever encountered) are firstly that they can run for short distances at an amazing speed, faster than a running man, even when the ground is muddy or waterlogged; secondly, they vanish into underground burrows with astonishing alacrity. Neither of us felt willing to start digging to try to find their nests.
In the end the only way we could get hold of them was to make a sudden or alarming noise or movement, which would make most of the insects in the vicinity roll themselves up. This at least made them stationary, although they would unroll very quickly indeed, their stings raised and their mandibles open for a strike. However, by moving swiftly we were able to scoop up and trap the ones we wanted.
We discovered just how dangerous the insect could be when rolled: the bristles are as fine as hairs, but they are stiff and hollow and act as hypodermic needles for the venom they contain. The bristles of one of the first thrymes I tried to pick up easily penetrated the outer level of the handling gauntlets I was wearing, although the inner layer managed to block them. One of the insects Dake picked up unrolled in his hand, and spat venom directly towards his eyes – needless to say he was wearing visor protection, which saved him.
Once the insects were safely contained in laboratory condition, Aubrac began to examine them at close quarters. Although none of the team had ever been attacked by one of the thrymes, they were clearly ferocious. Aubrac’s first enquiry was into the creatures’ aggressive nature, or whether its fearsome weapon system was merely for defence:
I have created three test environments, each made of an escape-proof glass container, with a layer of moist soil and leaf-mould at the base. Into this I have introduced a number of different kinds of potential foes or predators, to see how the thryme would get on. The grim results are as follows:
1.
A hawk-like predatory bird, seen by us to hover and dive against small animals or perhaps insects on the ground. The bird we captured for this test was approximately three times the size of the largest thryme. It panicked as it was thrust into the test cell, and was dead within four seconds. We have not repeated this experiment.
2.
A pit viper, at least three metres in length: survived for forty-eight seconds.
3.
A rat: killed within nineteen seconds. It survived so long only by fast attempts to escape.
4.
A giant venomous centipede, with a heavily armoured carapace and one of the most pernicious venoms Dake says he has ever analysed: it vigorously joined the thryme in battle, but survived for only thirty-three seconds.
5.
A large spider, seen to attack birds’ nests and to display ‘huntsman’ tendencies of aggressive behaviour, and equipped with two large sacs of highly effective venom: dead within four seconds.
6.
A huge scorpion, one of the largest I have ever come across: it attacked the thryme with instant relish, but was dead within eight seconds.
More alarming still was the discovery Dr Lei made about the system of venom carried by the thryme. It carried two arrangements of venom sacs: one in the tail, the other in tiny bladders inside its mandible. From the jaw it could envenom both by a bite and in some cases by spitting. This was a fairly conventional arrangement, although the venom was a peculiarly powerful cocktail of proteins, amino acids and anti-coagulants. Lei’s analysis of the compounds was to a large extent frustrated by the discovery that the venom appeared to change its nature from one individual thryme specimen to another, and even then to change its constituents at different times of the year.