He was just a shade too light for nature, and the ichneumon has a pretty sense of colour.
In Europe it is preyed upon by minute ichneumon flies (Chalcids).
The ichneumon may be seen busily searching the bushes for her victim.
“Oh, that plant that the ichneumon resorts to when bitten,” exclaimed Macallan.
Buffon assumes that the ichneumon has been brought to a state of domesticity.
According to Pliny, the ichneumon was an object of veneration among the Egyptians.
Denon has given us the following account of the ichneumon in his Travels in Egypt.
The eggs of the ichneumon fly hatch first and feed upon the eggs of the spider.
It was hanging from a thread, down which the ichneumon fly was seen to crawl.
After the ichneumon flies had disappeared, a new difficulty arose.
1570s, originally a weasel-like animal in Egypt, Latinized from Greek ikhneumon, literally "searcher, tracker," perhaps because it hunts crocodile eggs, from ikhneuein "hunt for, track," from ikhnos "a track, footstep, trace, clue," of unknown origin. Used by Aristotle for a species of wasp that hunts spiders (a sense in English from 1650s).
