Proboscis

“ In fig. 23 the proboscis is seen in an everted state; it is only so carried when feeding, being withdrawn when the animal is at rest. Probably its use is to enable the animal to introduce its rasping and licking apparatus into very narrow apertures for the purposes of feeding, e.g. into a small hole bored in the shell of another mollusc.
A, Simple introvert completely introverted.
B, The same, partially everted by eversion of the sides, as in the Nemertine proboscis and Gastropod eye-tentacle = pleurecbolic. ”

“ The tip of the proboscis is armed with a complicated series of chitinous teeth and rasps, by means of which the fly is enabled to pierce the skin of its victim; as usual in Diptera the organ is closed on the upper side by the labrum, or upper lip, and contains the hypopharynx or common outlet of the paired salivary glands, which are situated in the abdomen. The proboscis of tsetse-flies is without the paired piercing stilets (mandibles and maxillae) possessed by other blood-sucking Diptera, such as the female horse-flies and mosquitoes. ”

“ The recurved hooks serve to fasten the parasite very firmly to the tissues of the host. The proboscis is hollow and retractile; it can be withdrawn into the body by means of muscles attached internally to its tip. It does not, however, pass straight into the body-cavity, but is retracted into a special cavity—the proboscis sheath—with a double muscular wall. The proboscis sheath may perhaps be looked upon as a septum, such as is found in some of the Nematomorpha, dividing the body-cavity into two parts. ”

“ The palpi are furnished on their convex sides with long and sharply-pointed dark-brown setæ or hairs, while the inner concave sides, which are brought into contact with the proboscis, are perfectly smooth and fleshy. Three circular openings seem to indicate the tubular nature of what in the house-fly is a fleshy, expanded, and highly-developed muscular proboscis 591 (seen in Fig. 388, Musca domestica) . The proboscis (labium) forms the chief part of the organ, dilates into wonderful muscular lips, and enables the insect to employ the tongue as a prehensile organ. ”

“ The musculature is but little developed and the longitudinal sheath hardly exists. The proboscis-sheath consists of a simple muscular layer, and the short proboscis has few hooks and presents an embryonic appearance.
The sexually-mature form lives in the carp, Cyprinus carpio; the larval form is found, according to Villot, [221] encysted in the fat bodies of the larva of Sialis lutaria, one of the Neuroptera, and in the alimentary canal of the leech Nephelis octocula, and successful experiments have been made in infecting some species of the water snail Limnaea. ”

“ As the parasites grow older they bury their proboscis and neck in the wall of the intestine, the inner surface of which is studded with the orange-coloured bodies of the parasites. The proboscis is so deeply sunk in the wall of the alimentary canal as to form a papilla on its outer surface (Fig. 92) . The larvae of E. proteus are found in the body-cavity of Gammarus pulex, one of the Amphipod Crustacea, and also in the same position in numerous fresh-water fishes; they must have passed into this first host by the {183}mouth and alimentary canal. ”

“ I believe the subject is still in tenebris; but the stomach is said to be always filled with sand and minnute fragments of shells, between the swallowing of which and an elaborate prehensile array of recurved hooks, I certainly can imagine no connexion. The whole spinous surface of the proboscis is much more brilliantly iridescent than the body. The termination of this organ is said to be furnished with a circle of short digitate tentacles; but as the animal did not evert the proboscis to the full extent while I had it alive, I had no opportunity of observing these. ”

“ The animals in the living condition are bright orange or red but lose their color very soon after preservation in alcohol or formalin.
The proboscis cavity extending the entire length of the organ is surrounded by a network of connective tissue supported by longitudinal bands of plain muscle. This cavity is supposed to communicate with the exterior by a very small opening, the proboscis pore, but this did not show in the specimens examined. The heart, proboscis gland and notochord are located in the posterior part of the proboscis. ”

“ He who will insert a fine and flexible bristle into the expanded mouth of the flower between the sloping ridges on the labellum, will not doubt that they serve as guides and effectually prevent the bristle or proboscis from being inserted obliquely into the nectary. This latter circumstance is of manifest importance, for, if the proboscis were inserted obliquely, the saddle-formed disc would become attached obliquely, and after the compounded movement of the pollinia they would not strike the two lateral stigmatic surfaces. ”

“ We were compelled to dig wells in the vicinity of the lagoons to obtain water for our use; but no artifice could shield us from the unmerciful attacks of the mosquitoes, especially the kind called pullones, from the length and strength of the proboscis. We tried in vain to escape their painful sting by rolling ourselves from head to foot in our ponchos and hammocks, at the peril of suffocation; the needle-like proboscis of the insects actually penetrated through the folds of our covering so as to draw blood. ”

“ You remember, do you not, that the locust has a pair of soft jaws covering over the dark, hard ones? In the moths and butterflies these jaws are different. Each one is long, and has a deep groove on the inner side. These two grooves fit together, and make a slender tube called a proboscis. When flying this long tube is rolled up in a tight coil under the head; alighting, the proboscis is quickly uncoiled and dipped into the throat of the flower, and the sweet nectar sipped from it. See here, Jack, what have you on your fingers?"
"The dust from the butterfly's wings, sir." ”

“ Horns from half to three-quarters the length of the skull, straight or slightly sinuate, strongly ribbed basally.
Distribution. Extending diagonally across Africa from Abyssinia to Damaraland. No species found either in N.W., South, or S.E. Africa.
Of this genus we are prepared to recognize six species, which fall naturally into two groups— (A) those in which the proboscis is comparatively slightly, developed and the last lower molar is without a posterior lobe, and (B) those in which the proboscis is very long and the last lower molar, as in other Ruminants, has a third lobe. ”

“ I have carefully measured the proboscis of a specimen of Macrosila cluentius from South America, in the collection of the British Museum, and find it to be nine inches and a quarter long! One from tropical Africa (Macrosila morganii) is seven inches and a half. A species having a proboscis two or three inches longer could reach the nectar in the largest flowers of Angræcum sesquipedale, whose nectaries vary in length from ten to fourteen inches. That such a moth exists in Madagascar may be safely predicted; ”

“ The proboscis is hollow, and the honey is sucked up by the extreme tip.
In the butterfly the proboscis is the only part of the mouth that is fully developed. In many insects the mouth is very complicated in structure; but in the butterfly a number of the parts are almost entirely suppressed. The labial palpi (I, II, III) , however, are usually pretty well marked. They are long and narrow, and are densely covered with hairs. To these hairs the pollen adheres, while the butterfly is engaged in sucking the honey, and by them it is carried to the stigma of the next flower the insect enters. ”

“ There are two species; both are much flattened in shape, have four pairs of legs, a thick short proboscis and a horny integument. Their habit is to attach themselves to the skin by plunging their proboscides into it, and then suck the blood until their flat bodies are distended into a globular form. The whole proceeding, however, is very slow, and it takes them several days to pump their fill. No pain or itching is felt, but serious sores are caused if care is not taken in removing them, as the proboscis is liable to break off and remain in the wound. ”

“ When the proboscis is shut up and inactive, it is very much flattened, and is three or four times broader than it is thick. The edges are always round; it grows tapering, though very gradually, towards the extremity. The lower and membranaceous part of the trunk has no fibres or villi on it, but is covered with little protuberant transparent pimples, that are placed in regular order, and at equal distances from each other, resembling the little risings observable on the skin of birds when the feathers have been plucked off. ”

“ A shower of these diminutive vermin will sometimes drop from a branch, if unluckily shaken, and disperse themselves over the body, each fastening on the neck, the ears, and eyelids, and inserting a barbed proboscis. They burrow, with their heads pressed as far as practicable under the skin, causing a sensation of smarting, as if particles of red hot sand had been scattered over the flesh. ”

“ In Fig. 59 is seen a portion of the Jelly-fish disk, with the fringe of tentacles highly magnified. The disk of the Eucope (Fig. 60) looks like a shallow bell, of which the proboscis often seems to form the handle; for the disk has such an extraordinary thinness that it turns inside out with the greatest ease, so that the inner surface may become at any moment the outer one, with the proboscis projecting from it, as in Fig. 60, while the next movement of the animal may reverse its whole position, and the proboscis then hangs down from the inside, as in other Jelly-fishes. ”

“ Mr. Darwin was the first to explain the significance of this curious difference. It cost him several years of patient labour, but when once pointed out it is sufficiently obvious. An insect thrusting its proboscis down a primrose of the long-styled form (Fig. 12) would dust its proboscis at a part (a) which, when it visited a short-styled flower (Fig. 13) , would come just opposite the head of the pistil (st) , and could not fail to deposit some of the pollen on the stigma. Conversely, an insect visiting a short-styled plant would dust its proboscis at a part farther [Pg 132] from the tip ”

“ Fig. 9.—A, Proboscis of a "long-tongued" bee, Anthophora pilipes; B, lower, C, upper view of proboscis of an "obtuse-tongued" bee, Prosopis pubescens. a, Labrum; b, stipes; c, palpiger; d, scale: f, lobe; g, palpus; h, cardo, of maxilla: i, lorum; k, submentum; l, mentum; m, labial palp; n, paraglossa; o, ligula; p, tip of ligula (with "spoon" at tip and some of the hairs more magnified) ; q, hypopharyngeal sclerites.
The way in which the proboscis of the bee acts has been very largely discussed, with special reference to the question as to whether it is a sucking or a licking action. ”

“ Nettles, Passion-flowers, and Lilies frequently line their interiors with stiff, in-pointing hairs which oppose a most effective palisade against anything that crawls, whereas a flyer provided with a proboscis can stand on the edge and, inserting his straw, drink up the best soda water in plantdom. This existence of proboscides in insects which help to cross-fertilize flowers is the very finest example we have of true mutualism. Here is a case where members of two supposedly different worlds of life have developed highly specialized organs in order that they might help each other. ”

“ The proboscis, shaped like a conical tube, is armed with two projecting mandibles, which, like true pincers, can be brought close together, or moved wide apart, thrust forward singly or [356] simultaneously. Our animal, which a small lens makes very distinct, has been more than once confounded with the Sarcoptes scabiei.
Let us resume. Our cheese-dust, which to all appearance walks alone, encloses legions of mites; the old you may detect by their eight feet, the young by having six. ”

“ BALANOGLOSSUS, the general name given to certain peculiar, opaque, worm-like animals which live an obscure life under stones, and burrow in the sand from between tide-marks down to the abyssal regions of the sea. Their colour is usually some tone of yellow with dashes of red, brown and green, and they frequently emit a pungent odour. The name has reference to the tongue-shaped muscular proboscis by which the animal works its way through the sand. The proboscis is not the only organ of locomotion, being assisted by the succeeding segment of the body, the buccal segment or collar. ”

“ Each of its eight legs possesses two claws, and the proboscis incloses feelers which are similarly armed. The beetle plunges its barbed proboscis into the flesh of man or animals, and holds on very firmly with its other members till it is gorged with blood, growing as large as a good-sized bean, when it drops off. ”

“ PROBOSCIS, the trunk of an elephant (Gr. προβοσκίς, πρό, before, βόσκειν, to feed) , the long flexible snout of the order of Mammalia called Proboscidea (q.v.) , which embraces the elephant and its extinct allies the mammoths and mastodons. ”

“ Loxophyllum duplostriatum Maupas '83. Shevyakov '96.
Body frequently brown or brilliant yellow in color, somewhat sigmoid in form with tapering anterior end, the extremity of which is turned dorsally. The proboscis is about half the entire length and is not sharply marked from the rest of the body but tapers gradually, its base being equal to the diameter of the body at its middle point. The body is slightly contractile and the posterior end is carried to a rounded point, but not into a distinct tail. ”