Scientific Findings
In 1940, possibly before the fact had been established among naturalists, Gopal Chandra published an article in the Transactions of the Bose Institute of Calcutta, outlining how the queen in social insects such as ants or bees, produces other queens, workers or soldiers, by appropriately altering the nature of the royal jelly fed to the larvae. His observations were based on the Indian variety of ants, Occophylia. He managed to have the ants make nests inside transparent cellophane so that they could be quietly watched, and he noticed how only a special food, certain newly sprouted leaves and buds, induces the formation of queens. This remarkable finding was published in 1940, but the journal was not well circulated abroad during the war years, and it is only now that Gopal Chandra's pioneering work is being recognized.
He was also an early observer of tool use by animals, particularly how hunting wasps use small stone chips for closing nest holes. He also observed how earwigs in the breeding period, grow a muddy ball (like a boxing glove) on its hind legs, which it uses for defending its eggs from predators. If the mud is washed away, the insect promptly places its hind legs into the mud until a new ‘boot’ is formed. This behaviour is not seen outside the breeding season. Since this observation was reported in a Bengali language article in the 1940s, it was not widely known.
Another important observation by Gopal Chandra involves metamorphosis in amphibians. He showed that administering penicillin inhibits certain bacteria in tadpoles, which then fail to mature into frogs. This was against the then prevalent notions that bacteria are always harmful (pathogenic), and Gopal Chandra may have been among the pioneers in demonstrating the existence of salogenic i.e., health giving, bacteria. This pioneering study was later published by his associates in Science and Culture, a Kolkata-based journal.
His magnum opus, bAnglAr kiTa-patanga (1975), which collects these and many other observations, has yet to be translated.
Read more about this topic: Gopal Chandra Bhattacharya
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