A mother is an adopted son as well as an adopted son. Anyone who has read Zhang Hui's novels in the Ming Dynasty is familiar with the word "moth", such as Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Chapter 36: "Brother has a son, why use moths?" The first moment of surprise. Volume 33: "After consulting with the Xiongnu family, I was the son of a moth."
Then, why did the ancients call their adopted sons "moths"?
The word "moth" was first found in the Book of Songs. Xiaoya. Xiaowan: "A moth has a son, and a grub lives." This means that if the moth gives birth to a young son, grubs can hatch it. In these two poems, two kinds of insects appear. Let's first understand what are stem borers and grubs.
Borer, a pest, is a kind of green bug on mulberry trees, so it is also called caterpillar, which belongs to the larva of moths. For example, in the Song Dynasty, Zhu's Biography said, "Moths are insects on mulberry trees." An insect with a black body and a thin waist, resembling a bee, nests on muddy branches and often preys on pests, which is beneficial to crop growth. Also known as Pru 158 virtual video and salamander, now commonly known as bee. For example, The Book of Rites. The golden mean: "The husband is in charge, and the pride is in charge." Zheng Xuan. Note: "Pru, grotesque, also known as a native bee."
According to Yang Xiong's Fa Yan in the Western Han Dynasty. The moth's son is naked, so I hope he is like me, like me. That will be a long time. The grub took the moth larva back to the mud nest and said to it, "Like me, like me." "After a long time will become naked. This sentence of Yang Xiong was later quoted by many scholars in his works.
For example, Xu Shen in the Eastern Han Dynasty wrote "Shuo Wen Jie Zi": "Strange shape, native bee, nature of heaven and earth, pure man without children." Zheng Xuan commented on the Book of Songs in Han Dynasty: "Pu Lu took the silkworm's son, took it away, and raised it to become his son." Lu Jinji's Poems on Plants, Birds, Animals, Insects and Fish in Shi Mao: "Naked armor is a native bee, which looks like a bee and has a small waist. It took a silkworm and threw it into a hollow forest. It became a child in seven days. "
According to Yang Xiong, the ancients believed that the giant salamander was pure female and childless. It would catch moth larvae and hide them in its nest, and raise them gently, praying that it would become the son of a bee insect and a giant salamander in seven days. Therefore, the ancients believed that grubs were not born and fed moths as their own sons. Later, they called their adopted son a "moth".
Tao Jinghong, a medical scientist in the Southern Dynasties, questioned this statement. He consulted a large number of ancient books and related records at that time and found that the statements were all the same. In order to dispel his doubts, he found the nest of giant salamander and actually observed and recorded its growth. Tao Jinghong's annotation "Materia Medica" mentioned that it is simply wrong to raise moths as their own sons. According to his observation, grubs often catch borers as food for larvae, instead of feeding them, making them offspring of the same kind.
It turns out that when female nymphs lay eggs, they will build a nest with clay balls, then lay eggs in the nest, hang the eggs in the nest with silk, and then go out to catch green bugs. The larvae are anesthetized by acupuncture and then brought back to the nest as food for the larvae. Usually one or twenty larvae are stored in a nest, and then the eggs are sealed and the bees hatch into larvae. When they grow into bees, they will break their nests and fly away.
Most nests are built on branches, trunks, stone walls, etc. Some nests have several nests, each with an egg, and some nests have only one nest, which looks like a clay pot. Another giant salamander does not hold mud to build a nest. It lays eggs in bamboo tubes and reed pipes, then puts them into caterpillars and seals the nozzle with mud. If the tube is long enough, it will continue to lay eggs, release larvae and seal them, so that it can nest and lay eggs one by one in the tube.
When a grub catches a stem borer, it will use a poisonous needle to stab the head of the stem borer, let the venom enter its brain, anesthetize it, prevent it from dying, and make it lose consciousness and action ability, that is, it can't move alive. This will temporarily preserve the body of the stem borer and will not rot. Then, grubs take the moths back to their nests. When eggs become larvae, they feed on moths until they grow into small ground bees. Therefore, if the borer dies immediately and the corpse rots, it is not suitable for food.
The ancients thought that grubs raised the cotton bollworm as their own son. Although this is wrong, the cotton bollworm has been used as an adopted son ever since.