2012 | HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 2 (2): 25786

|Theme|

Insect Magnetism

The communication circuits of Rhinoceros

beetle fighting in Thailand
Stphane RENNESSON, Emmanuel GRIMAUD, Nicolas
CSARD, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

The Rhinoceros beetle fighting scene in northern Thailand exposes a puzzling technique of
bringing together human and animal action. We intend to show through the study of this
game that some cases invite us to specify our understanding of the notion of
communication. What can the breeder-players share with their beetles? The answer to this
question is far from being self-evident because the partners of the game do not share at all
the same perceptive and cognitive abilities. Amateurs agree on the fact that the beetles
cannot be really tamed, but since they are sensitive to vibration one can, however, try to
enhance their fighting potentialities and to guide them by tactile means during the fight.
Drawing on radical questionings of the notions of signal and noise, we shall try to
determine to what extent beetle fighting can help us to reconsider the debate on the
possibility of presignaletic forms of communication.
Keywords: Human-animal communication, vibration, signal and noise, beetle, Thailand

All that is not information, not redundancy, not

form and not restraintsis noise, the only possible
source of new patterns.
Gregory Bateson, Steps to an ecology of mind, 1972

Among the many popular games in Thailand whose principal actors are animals
(insects, fish, birds, cattle), Rhinoceros Beetle fighting (Xylotrupes mniszechi
tonkinensis, locally called kwaang) involves an unusual form of partnership
between man and animal that will enable the notion of communication to be
considered under a new light. Elsewhere we have shown that what is interesting
about kwaang fighting is the difficulty for humans to control their beetles during

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons | Stphane Rennesson, Emmanuel
Grimaud, and Nicolas Csard. Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported.
ISSN 2049-1115 (Online)

258 | Stphane RENNESSON, Emmanuel GRIMAUD, and Nicolas CSARD

fights in a purely mechanical way (Rennesson, Grimaud, and Csard 2011). 1 The
beetles are said by the amateurs to be capricious and unstable, at least considering
their fighting mood. The players and the bettors know that their animals can at any
moment exit the structure to which they are trying to confine them. One can even
wonder if the entire playing device is not primarily devoted to fostering the
ambiguity of the relation of control. 2

Figure 1. One of the two players meditates on the effects

of the vibration he produces on the beetles by way of
rolling his notched stylus on the log.

1. This article is the result of collective fieldwork conducted by Stphane Rennesson,

Emmanuel Grimaud, and Nicolas Csard. Other forms of species game, such as fish
fights or birdsong competitions, involve very different approaches to animal
communication. This comparative perspective will be developed in future articles.
2. Nurturing the uncertainty of a communication device is far from being a distinctive
feature of interspecific relations. It can also prove to be fruitful among interactions
between humans as accurately showed in this themed section by Matthew Carey as he
analyzes flirtatious relationships in Morocco.
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INSECT MAGNETISM | 259

As we shall later examine in more detail, one challenge for the player is to
succeed in establishing and maintaining contact with his insect. It is by means of
vibrationby creating with the insect the conditions for a tactile and vibratory
form of communicationthat this interaction acquires all of its substance. By so
doing, the players follow a well-documented ability for vibratory communication
among arthropods (see figure 1). Beetles, notably, can produce various kinds of
stridulation depending on the different species (for example, by scraping their
protothorax against their mesothorax as with the Rhinoceros Beetle). At the
beginning of the twentieth century, Slovenian biologist Ivan Regenwho studied
field crickets behaviorwas the first to recognize that stridulation was a means of
communication between insects. 3 On this account, kwaang fighting deserves its
place in an alternative history of communication systems that is not based on an
overly strict definition of communication, but instead draws from more diverse
cases, including interspecific ones. In the long history of man-animal
communication, the feats performed by the well-known Clever Hansthe horse
that knew how to counthave become a kind of turn-of-the-twentieth-century case
study. 4 Although it was proven that Hans was neither telepathically guided, nor
gifted with conceptual intelligence, he was still able to give correct answers by
means of visual clues that his questioners unwittingly provided as they performed
micromovements, to which horses are particularly responsive. On the basis of a
kind of analogic communication, 5 the importance of which among mammals has
been highlighted by Gregory Bateson (1972), the questioners were in fact
suggesting the solutions to Hans without knowing it, as the variation of their
muscular tension signaled to the horse that his counting was approaching the
correct answer.
3. Besides, as was shown by Japanese biologists, pupae and larvae of some kinds of
beetles communicate through vibrations in the humus where they dwell. Their study
gives credence to the sensibility of these animals to vibrations that propagates in a solid
environment (Kojima, Ishikawal, and Takanashi 2012).
4. Bred and trained by Wilhelm von Osten, who was a mathematics teacher, Hans in fact
displayed some bewildering proficiencies since he was able to solve mathematical
problems, give the date, point out an individual in a crowd from a picture, and even
spell words by means of a numeric code. He would answer by hitting the ground with
his foot as many times as necessary. These equine feats were at the heart of a
controversy that shook the Berlin scientific community for a few months from 1904 to
1905 (Pfungst [1911] 1965; Despret 2004).
5. Following Charles Sanders Peirces typology of signs as ways to denote an object (icon,
index, and symbol), theories of communication tend to make a difference between
analogic/analog forms of communication and digital forms. Analogic coding
encompasses every avenue of communication that is not verbal: body movements,
gestures, postures, facial expressions, etc. With regard to humans, it also includes
paralinguistic elements such as voice inflections, rhythms, and intonations. Analogic
communication essentially refers to social relations and is a matter of correspondences
of magnitude. It is all about the modulation of intensities. On the other hand, digital
coding, that is to say verbal and articulated language, enables to depict the state of the
world and is operated through a purely arbitrary and conventional association between
signs and what they stand for. For a discussion on the hybridization of digital and
analogic codes, see Bateson about dolphins (1972) and also Deleuzes comment on
Batesons dolphins (1981) and on Francis Bacon (2003).
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Among other things, the Clever Hans case teaches us to recognize the
complexity of communication, in both its conscious and unconscious aspects.
While it is true that experts were at first victims of deceit and self-deception while
developing the experimental apparatus, we are more interested in Vinciane
Desprets view (2004) that the horse had taught its breeder how to ask questions at
least as much as the latter had trained the former to answer. Moreover, it is
probably no coincidence that the collection of essays edited by Thomas A. Sebeok
and Robert Rosenthal (1981)on the subject of communication between humans
and animals, specifically what this enables us to understand about interaction
between humansdepends on case studies that only involve mammals (big apes,
cetaceans, and horses). Needless to say, this is the part of the phylogenetic tree
where we find animals that share the greatest propinquity with human beings in
terms of their subjective universe, or Umwelt (Jakob von Uexkll [1934] 2010).
It is there that we have the opportunity to observe the workings of logical
continuities and discontinuities in the handling of symbols, clues, and icons. 6
We would like to shift the question by examining a case that is even more
puzzling, where the kind of analogic communication highlighted by Gregory
Bateson (1972) among mammals seems impossible. 7 In beetle fights, obviously, the
cooperating partners do not share the same perceptional and cognitive abilities at
all. Here the possibility of analogic communication is less spontaneously
conceivable than it is between mammals, and it cannot be taken for granted that a
shared framework of action exists between a human being and an insect. The game
presupposes the participation of two speciesbeetles and menwhose perceptual
worlds are very remote from one another. How can they communicate?
With both humans and animals in mind, Bateson advocates a position opposite
to Claude Shannons (1948) telegraphic and linear view of communication. Steps
to an ecology of mind can be read as a reaction to Shannons reduction of
interhuman communication to an exchange of messages between a pole
transmitter and a pole receiver (Bateson 1972). Conversely, Bateson describes
rather complex cybernetic circuits composed of numerous feedback loops in
which signals circulate endlessly. But, as we shall see later, beetles make it quite
tricky to decide exactly what constitutes a signal and whether or not there is any
communication of that sort.
Is there a communication before any signal is produced or is signal production
a condition needed to establish a communication? All that is not information, not
redundancy, not form and not restraintsis noise, the only possible source of new
patterns, writes Bateson in Cybernetic explanation (1972). We know that a
living creature, be it a man or an amoeba, does not need to be conscious to emit
and receive a signal, to modulate physical magnitudes, and to interpret it. But
Gilbert Simondon suggests another idea about the ontogeny of signal that enables
6. Researchers have also been looking for proof of symbol-handling by social birds and
insects. Regarding the latter we could point to the famous controversy between Karl
Von Frisch (1950) and Emile Benveniste (1952) over bee language, discussed by Tim
Ingold (1988) and Dominique Lestel (2002).
7. The possibility of a communication between human beings and mammals is
comprehensively discussed in this volume by Charles Stpanoffs study of reindeer
herding system.
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us to go beyond the rather cryptic concluding sentence of Batesons article. 8 As

Simondon says, it would be restrictive not to see any communication in the
simplest organized life forms responding to their environment and modifying it by
doing so, even if there is apparently no exchange of signals as such. Organisms
endowed with a central nervous system like human beings (and beetles, too,
actually!) can combine this ecologic communication with a more elaborated
mode, that Simondon calls ethologic communication (2010: 9293). Considering
acoustic and vibratory communication, Simondon argues that signals involved with
ethologic communication do not constitute in themselves a mere conquest of
intelligence over the basic needs dealt with at the ecological level. These signals are
not merely selected by a more complex organism in its surroundings amid the
background noise made up of a myriad of stimuli. 9 As Simondon argues, one can
observe a real continuity from one mode of communication to the other. Instead
of being an obstacle to ethologic communication, the background noise can
prepare individuals to receive signals (ibid.: 91). Simondon thus defines the
vibratory field as a kind of primitive support for communication (ibid.: 9396).
Background noise functions as a sustaining energy whose modulations carry
motivation germs and patterns of action. Contrary to what happens in
communication through technical channels, Simondon suggests that background
noise can be regarded as a potential source of stimulation and synchronization.
Indebted to Bateson and Simondon for their radical questioning of the notions
of signal and noise, we will see here to what extent beetle fighting can help us to
reconsider the debate on the possibility of presignaletic forms of communication.
The kwaang fight set-up can appear rudimentary at first glance. Two male beetles
are placed on a wooden log that serves as the combat area. This log has two small
holes that contain females and their pheromone is expected to excite the two males.
The two players position themselves at either end of the log. They can then
influence the behavior of their insects in three ways: (a) Through direct contact
(players can touch their beetles with their fingers), (b) by means of a notched stylus
that can be operated in two different ways (players can stimulate the beetle by
touching it directly with the stylus or press the stylus against the log and nimbly roll
it between their thumb and middle finger so as to produce vibrationsee video 1
and video 2), and (c) by turning the log around its longitudinal axis (the players
goal is to help his beetle find the best position in which to grab its opponent or
escape its opponents grip).

8. In his courses at the Sorbonne in the 1970s, Gilbert Simondon called for a broader
theory of communication not only concerned with humans but also including the way
bacteria communicate with their environment, the various modes of communication of
animals (vibratory, acoustic, etc.), as well as the latest communication networks
produced by humans (2010).
9. On this problem, see Jakob von Uexkll ([1934] 2010) and James J. Gibson (1977),
who approach motivations among animals in terms of qualities and affordances. Both
of them invite us to consider these motivations as closely connected to the physical
properties of the environment, paying attention to the way species are engaged in a
selective scanning of the features offered to them by their surroundings, according to
their cognitive and perceptual abilities.
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262 | Stphane RENNESSON, Emmanuel GRIMAUD, and Nicolas CSARD

We could limit ourselves to this simple technical description, but it is not

without disadvantages. It confines the humans and insects to roles that poorly
convey the subtlety of their interaction. Looking at the situation from the beetles
perspective, we could say that they force humans to submit to the requirements of
their Umwelt (Von Uexkll [1934] 2010). Beetles are sensitive to vibrations, so it is
through vibrations that players communicate with their insects. Here we will show
how the vibratory processes to which men are forced to conform can be seen as a
communication test that takes the player to the limits of the possibility of pooling
communication resources. 10

Video 1. Rhinoceros beetles are quite responsive to direct contact. 11

10. As such, we assume a totally different approach from Clifford Geertz (1973). Instead of
considering animals embedded in a human game and manipulated as symbols in a
cultural text to which they are alien, we try to be sensible to the way the player is forced
to adopt a certain mode of communication, becoming his own beetle's extension.
11. All videos are available for viewing on the HAU: Journal of Ethnograhic Theory
website. To watch a video, click the video screenshot.
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INSECT MAGNETISM | 263

Video 2. The log as a communication medium.

The mechanistic temptation

Let us first take a look at the direct contacts players establish with their insects. To
grip a kwaang, one applies downward pressure with the finger on the posterior
edge of the abdomen. This process enables the very efficient claws to be unhooked
from the legs at the front and then from those in the middle and back if the gesture
is prolonged. By lightly pinching the two upper legs with the thumb and forefinger,
one can make the coleopteron let go completely. This technique is used to
withdraw ones beetle from the log between combat rounds. Among the forms of
control available to the player, this action is certainly one of the most directive.
The control relationship here is similar to that which one can have with an electric
device by means of a switch. It is thus possible to place the beetle in a
hook/unhook position. Yet, it would be a mistake to think that beetles can be
controlled so mechanically while active, during a fight. This is only done outside of
the action of the fight itself (see figure 2).
Another kind of contact, perhaps even more authoritarian than the preceding
one, is established when players grab their beetles during fights to give their insect a
second chance in a fight that has started badly. The player catches the beetle by the
upper horna continuation of its thorax and therefore linked to the animals
bodybetween the thumb and forefinger and shakes it vigorously. Players say that
this has the advantage of erasing its short-term memory. This gesture is used when
one of the beetles runs away or exits the game and the player needs to bring it back
into play. Released from the inhibiting burden of past traumas, the kwaang that got
off to a bad start is now able to launch a fresh attack against its opponent.
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Figure 2. In order to untangle the two beetles, one of the two

players passes its stylus between his animals legs. By doing so,
he intends to anesthetize the insects nervous system.

Even if it is difficult to evaluate the shakes true impact on the beetles nervous
system, this local theory on coleopteran psychology suggests an interesting
avenue: to some extent, a kwaang could be reset just as one can press the reset
button on a computer to unfreeze the system, which is then available for a new task
(see video 3). With this action, one moves away from a stop/start control
relationship and enters into another type of relationship. The beetle could be
influenced by this way of reprogramming (that is, by refreshing its conditions of
perception). Usually, after briefly shaking his kwaang, the player almost
immediately repositions it on the log and makes it turn around two or three times
directly above one of the two females inserted in the log. Then he stimulates it with
the tip of the stylus, guiding it toward its opponent. The player is conscious that he
is dealing with a complex, sensitive nervous structure that he can influence through
something of a human short-circuit when the beetle is inhibited by the power
relationship with its opponent. The shake extricates the beetle from the narrow
circuit in which it has been inserted, to draw it into more specifically human
kinetics. In the players hands, it experiences an agitation to which its nervous
system must seldom be subjected in the wild.
These moments of manipulation, which suggest that beetles can be influenced
mechanically, nevertheless appear very sporadically. It is a matter of withdrawing
ones coleopteron from the game at moments of weakness, either between two
rounds within a fight or between two fights. The rest of the time, the interactions
that players develop with their insects are much more ambiguous in terms of
control, and in the course of these, they clearly have no need for theories or a firm
grasp of the beetles ability to process information and interpret the signals they
receive. At no point can kwaang fighting be reduced to a mechanical system, to a
remote control or string-puppet apparatus (see figure 3).
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Video 3. Resetting ones beetle.

Figure 3. The player starts to establish a connection with his kwaang by

rolling his notched stylus on the sugar cane stick the beetle is tied to.
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Establishing a connection
The following scene will enable a very close examination of how contact is
established between a player and a beetle, as well as a better understanding of what
is unique about their relationship in terms of control. We are in the home of a
player who is preparing to train one of his beetles. The insects have been placed
on sugar cane sticks on which they can feed. The player looks around, searching
for a beetle that would be worth testing. After momentarily hesitating, he lifts one
of the sugar cane sticks from the floor. He raises the gleaming, brown coleopteron
to eye level and observes its silhouette closely. The animal does not react. Now its
master rotates it in all directions, allowing it to be seen from several angles. With
its head riveted to its support, the beetle continues patiently chewing the cane that
the player peeled for this purpose. The player lightly taps the end of the insects
lower horn, which drops almost immediately. He once again lifts the beetle to his
eyes and sees that the horns have already closed again. The man has to make two
attempts before his coleopteron is prepared to keep its horns apart.
This position allows the player to assess the gap between its horns, on which
much of his gripping ability depends. From its upper horn, he unties the cotton
string that keeps it on its sugar cane stick. Although freed, the animal returns to its
meal. At the moment, it seems oblivious to the vibrations in the sugar cane stick
produced by the notched stylus, which the player is rolling between his thumb and
forefinger. After half a minute, the man decides to tap the cane several times with
the stylus as if to rouse his insect before once again rolling the instrument on the
skin of the sugar cane. The contact between the cane and the stylus produces a soft,
continuous hum. The player stops for a few minutes to observe the beetles
behavior more attentively. It has stopped eating and has lifted its head but is still
not moving. It has lost interest in the sugar cane, but the player is losing patience
with the indifference that has greeted his attempts at remote stimulation. So he
decides to touch the coleopteron directly with the stylus. He gives some sharp taps
to both sides of the base of the upper horn that extends the animals thorax; it
immediately leans to one side, then the other. Its movements are abrupt and look
like reflexes more than anything.
The beetle does not seem particularly inclined to cooperate. And yet the player,
undeterred by his insects resistance, says it is reacting well. He moves the stylus
away from the kwaang to vibrate it against the cane a few centimeters away. After a
few seconds, the coleopteron finally starts moving its front legs, and then the legs in
the middle and back follow that movement. It advances a few millimeters. It stops
again and then timidly resumes its crawl. It takes a few forward steps. The player
stops rolling the stylus, just long enough for the beetle to calmly arrive at the end of
the sugar cane stick. The player rolls his stylus on the animals left legs and the
animal starts turning to the left. He makes the beetle do a complete rotation before
doing the same thing on the right legs, making it perform a half-turn.
Now he places the stylus between the horns. With a tap on its head, the insect
vigorously pushes away the stylus, and then quickly makes its way to the other end
of the cane stick. The player withdraws the stylus in order to roll it again. The
animal quickly reaches the other end of the cane. Clearly intrigued by the source
of the vibrations, the kwaang attempts to move toward it but its front legs slip on
the hard skin of the cane. It explores the surrounding area with its front claws for a
few seconds then changes its mind and makes a half-turn. It advances a few
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centimeters and then stops again. Although the player redoubles his efforts
amplifying the rhythm of the vibrations by rolling the stylus against the fingernail
on his thumbthe coleopteron is no longer reacting.
The man therefore decides to resort to direct contact again. He makes the
insect turn around a few times in each direction before placing his stylus between
the horns to make it move forward, with success. When the kwaang starts to move,
the player places the stylus back under its lower horn, resting the tip against the
cane to block the insects path. The beetle tries to force its way through, backs up a
little, then braces itself on its six legs and tries to get under the stylus in order to lift
it. But the player cleverly follows the animals movements, keeping the stylus under
the lower horn. By repeating the process six times, the man succeeds in making the
beetle reverse a few centimeters and then he withdraws his stylus abruptly. The
insect has been launched. The player follows its forward movement by rolling the
stylus delicately between its horns. The coleopteron speeds up while giving taps of
the head to an opponent that he fails to grab.
The insect now appears to be obeying fully; now the players stylus almost never
leaves it. The man makes it walk along the cane from end to end. He seems to be
able to make it turn around, and to open and close its horns at will (see figure 4).

Figure 4. The player now tries a direct contact to stimulate

his kwaang by giving some sharp taps to both sides of the
base of the upper horn that extends the animals thorax.

It has taken the player several minutes to warm up his kwaang. Now he considers it
sufficiently receptive to stimulation to test it against several opponents. These will
not be real fights, but training situations in which he will attempt to gauge the
specimens fighting potential and martial qualities. The player decides to lower it
onto the wooden log that serves as the ring. He does this by tilting the cane stick,
placing the end just above the female beetle that has been inserted in the log.
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Upside down, not far from the female, the beautiful brown beetle does not budge,
utterly ignoring her. The player once again rolls the stylus against the cane hoping
to get the insect moving again. It does not hesitate long. Once it arrives at the end
of the stick it reaches out its front legs and ends up securing itself to the softwood
log in order to land above the female. It goes no farther. While its antennae beat
furiously above the captive, the player carefully sets the cane stick down behind
him to find an opponent (see video 4). He quickly sets his sights on a beetle that is
darker, slightly larger, and sturdier, but has a shorter posterior horn. Without
showing any concern for the brown beetle whose full attention seems to have been
captured by the female, the player now tries to awaken the fighting spirit in the
future opponent.

Video 4. Having ones beetle get down on the log above a captive female.

Left to fend for itself, the brown beetle abandons the female after a few minutes
and moves several centimeters away from her. It stops momentarily before turning
right. It then passes under the log and reappears on the other side before making a
half-turn and disappearing again, only to end up returning directly above the
female. Its antennae flutter for a few seconds and then it moves away two
centimeters and freezes. The player is in the process of warming up its opponent
but he notices the first beetles inactivity. So he tickles it with the stylus between its
horns to get it moving again. After bringing it back to its position over the female,
he leaves it again to concentrate on its opponent, which he lowers onto the log
above the other female. Once both beetles are on the log, the player places his
hand between the two insects to keep them from seeing one another. He makes
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one of them turn around and the other move forward, successively leading them to
the females and then making them back away. As long as he is unsuccessful in
making them simultaneously active, he keeps switching from one to the other,
dealing with each of them for a few seconds at a time. When they show signs
activity simultaneously, when they are walking or waving their antennae above a
female, the player vibrates his stylus against the log. After two minutes of this, he
decides to withdraw his hand, allowing the beetles to enter into conflict (see figure
5).

Figure 5. Once the beetles are on the log, the players go on

stimulating separately their beetle ahead of the fight. They alternate
direct touches on the body with vibrations obtained by rolling their
stylus on the log. By doing so, they try to give opportunity to their
insect to smell the pheromones of the two captive females.

Vibration as a medium
This somewhat long description was necessary in order to show that players do not
leave stimulation up to the presence of females and a rival male. We cannot limit
ourselves to an etho-naturalistic understanding of the process, according to which
males fight each other only for the right to cover the females. If this were the case,
kwaang enthusiasts could bank solely on the insects ability to stimulate itself. But
we know that in the wild, most meetings between two male beetles end in either
avoidance or a relatively quick fight; in any case, the fight does not last long enough
to produce a spectacle that kwaang players would consider worthy of that name. A
monospecific setup that involved simply releasing two males onto a log would not
provide the same quality of spectacle as an interspecific setup in which players pit
their skills against one another, as is the present case, stimulating their protgs and
sustaining their combativeness. Kwaang enthusiasts have instead chosen to move
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away from the configuration found in the wild through a clever cooperative system
that allows them to prolong the fight, which can last as long as twenty minutes.
The very subtle methods by which contact with the beetle is established, lost,
and restored is the other significant point that is deducible from the preceding
description. The challenge, of course, is to do everything possible not to lose it. It
is through a set of very precise microactions that contact is established, even if
the connection is by no means automatic. The player gets his coleopteron
movingnot without difficultysolely by producing vibrations with the stylus before
the beetle is even placed in the presence of its opponent within a triangular
configuration (two males + one female = a fight). He achieves this either through
direct contact with the animals body or by relying on the conductive properties of
the wood, which propagates the waves produced remotely through the rubbing of
the stylus. The player infiltrates the animal triangle through the method of
vibration, but this vibration is not reducible to that which another beetle would
produce. One might think that it is only by imitating the presence of another male
that a player could succeed in awakening his insects warrior instinct. But this
ignores the beetles ability to distinguish between vibrations emitted by a stylus and
those produced by another male. It would certainly be a mistake to bank on the
presence of mental pictures, of representations of the male in the kwaang brain. A
beetles cerebral structure is not sufficiently evolved. On the other hand, watching
the preceding interaction, we notice that a vibration is not in itself perceived as a
sign of the presence of another male. This vibration must accumulate and resonate
with the actual presence of a male and females in order to produce its full effect. It
is highly probable that the beetle never mistakes the rubbing of the stylus against
the wood for an opponents imminent arrival on his path. Just as the fight
configuration cannot be reduced to a mechanical control model, it would be overly
simplistic to think that mans role in the beetles world is that of a lure. Players
know that kwaang respond to a call to action that does not necessarily have a stable
motivation or meaning. If the meeting of two males either causes one or more of
them to retreat or leads to a confrontationquick though it may bethe player
must persist for a long time before rousing the coleopterons interest, maintaining
its activity, and keeping it from dwindling again.
At this point in the demonstration, the image that probably best conveys what is
at play is that of electricity, even if this will need some qualification. The beetle acts
as something of a vibration accumulator. An intensity is produced between the
player and the insect. But this intensity is not comparable to energy. Beetles do not
stock energy like an electric accumulator. The player cannot bank on this energy
the way he can count on the energy stored in the compressed spring of a watch.
Keeping a beetle active cannot be likened to managing energy that has been
transformed into mechanical energy. It is more a question of charging the animal
with an intensity that it circulates by struggling against its opponent. And yet, in
order to circulate intensity, what is needed is not just a generator but also a circuit
composed of conductive materials. The conductivity of the wooden support is
relatively weak, enough to cause signal loss. The player is never sure that the
signals he sends are not losing intensity. When he enters into direct contact with
the animal, either with his hands or through the stylus, he shortens the circuit and
maximizes the opportunities for the intensity to circulate again. It is advisable to
periodically restart the kwaang by touching it directly, reestablishing a circulation
of intensity that can be remotely interrupted at any time. This explains the
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alternation between directly manipulating the animals and taking a step back from
the action. The intensity can be maintained by vibrating the stylus against the log
once the beetle has been sufficiently charged or until it discharges following a
capture or a defeat during the fight itself.

Signal and modulation

It is quite clear that the player cannot control his beetle as one controls a puppet.
The stylus does not produce a transmission of mechanical energy between them.
Also, despite the precision this tool offers, the player is not in a relationship of the
kind one can have with a remote-controlled robot or a programmed object
requiring mastery of some form of coding (such that under this condition, do this
or that). By establishing contact, a reflex arc is solicited from the insect, which
carries out a quite precise operation, at least one that is more particularized than
the mere forward walk produced by rolling the stylus against the wood. Next,
through direct contact the player resets a smaller circuit with the animal that
ensures minimal signal loss. But this resumption of contact between the player and
his beetle only has value because the overall conductivity of the circuit must be
reestablished at any price. To be persuaded of this, one need only take a closer
look at how players release their beetles for the fight after the warming-up process
or after restimulating them during the match. Knowing how to warm up ones
beetle is not enough; one should also know how to release it (that is, leave it to its
own devices), or at least leave it to its opponent. The two opponents should be
brought to this stage as directly as possible, in order to preserve the equity of the
fight. If one of the animals presented the side of its body to the other, it would be
getting off to a bad start. But this is not all. Players also make sure to break off
contact with the animal at the right moment, sufficiently close to the opponent to
give their insects as much speed as possible before they enter into conflict (see
figure 6).
Once the beetles have been released, the players are no longer allowed to touch
their champions directly, except when the game has been stopped because at least
one of the opponents is no longer in a combat position (having either backed away
or left the combat area). When the two coleopterons confront each other, we enter
into another phase of intensity production without necessarily abandoning the
realm of contact. However, the nature of the contact changes. It is no longer
interspecific contact between a stylus and a beetle or between a human hand and
an insect, but monospecific contact between two animals that can no longer be
considered simply accumulators (see video 5). But when the accumulation phase is
successful, the conflict between the two produces spectacular reactions, with figures
resembling karate holds. In these figures, it is not always easy to decipher which
one has the advantage, and reversals of fortune are frequent. This is what makes
the game interesting. At this stage, the players do not hesitate to vibrate their styli
continuously. However, it would be simplistic to think that they do it only to
support their own beetle. Of course, a player may vibrate the tip of his stylus a few
centimeters from the ends of his insects legs to support its movements.

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272 | Stphane RENNESSON, Emmanuel GRIMAUD, and Nicolas CSARD

Figure 6. The art of breaking off contact with ones kwaang.

Video 5. Releasing the beetles is a matter of switching kinesthetic contacts.

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But what is significant here is that players are never really sure which beetle
benefits from the vibrations. The goal of the maneuver is to keep the circuit alive;
it matters little whether or not one knows how connections are made. The beetles
bathe in a single vibratory field, of which the players constitute the two poles. The
log must be vibrated in order to sustain the circulation of a minimal intensity. The
player can keep his stylus away from his insect or move it closer according to the
situation. Many players choose to move their stylus closer when they get the
impression that nothing is happening or, on the contrary, when something is
happening. Modulating vibrations is necessary to this circuit, which is lengthened
or shortened. It is by narrowing or extending the distance between ones stylus and
the two beetles that the insects are kept up and running (see figure 7).

Figure 7. The two players sustain jointly the vibratory field.

Having the vibratory upper hand

Does the manner in which a player interrupts the hum of his stylus to tap the log
stem from a different rationale? One is certainly changing frequency and
producing a characteristic acoustic thump (clack) that breaks with all rubbing and
humming. It would be easy to believe that this clack has the power to reset the
beetle, similar to when the beetle is shaken in order to erase a traumatizing
experience from its memory. But interviews conducted contradict this idea. One
may wonder whether this thump is aimed principally at the beetles, at the players
as a means of stimulating themselves, or even at the audience. In any case, one
senses that this loud acoustic signal is not of the same nature as the pure vibration
to which only beetles would be sensitive. It is not unusual to see small bells on the
players styli, adding a pleasant rhythm to the spectacle. But no one can really say
whether or not these have influence; they are more for appearances (see video 6).

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Video 6. Rolling ones notched stylus with its bells on the log.

On the other hand, the clack marks the upper limit of a vibratory spectrum, that
which causes the beetles to perceive signals and to act. Everything seems to take
place below the threshold of human aural perception. Beyond this frequency, no
one can tell whether or not the beetles are receptiveto the audiences shouts of
encouragement for example. For players and spectators alike it is difficult not to
participate in this game without imagining mechanistic responses. An immediate
reaction is expected from the clack. From the players point of view, it gives the
insect an incentive to strengthen its hold, to grip its opponent more forcefully
between its horns. The fact that there is a link between the clack and the closing of
pinchers does not necessarily make it a mere mechanistic action, from the point of
view of its implications for the shared management of game intensity. As long as
the pinchers have not closedas the player has either anticipated or simply
hopedhe will keep repeating his gesture until he obtains the desired result.
Striking the log with the stylus brings the players into a different relationship with
the action in terms of cooperation. The possibility of doing so at this point in the
fight, of supporting the actions of ones beetle and responding to them through a
signal that will reinforce its impulse, opens a door to a whole set of strategic
behaviors depending on whether the beetle is in an offensive or defensive situation.
A players personality is very much linked to how he alternates rolling, striking, and
clacking. It also very much depends on how he manipulates the log. In fact, players
can directly act upon the log by turning it around its axis. Log manipulation is
subject to a balance of power between the two players that merits closer
examination (see figure 8, figure 9, and video 7).
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Figure 8. The players not only can use their styli to motivate
their beetles; they can also help them in a more kinetic way by
turning the log around its axis.

Figure 9. When no advantage is recognized, manipulation of

the log is subject to a balance of power between the two players.

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Video 7. When the stakes are high the game tends to come
down to a balance of power between humans . . .

Players tell us that by turning the log in the appropriate manner, they can give their
beetle an advantage or correct its path, when at least one of the coleopterons is
moving in the direction of the other. When the two beetles are above the axis,
there is no point in manipulating the log. It is only when one of the two is not
parallel to the logs longitudinal axis that turning it becomes beneficial. One
thereby seeks to position ones beetle lower than its opponent so that its lower
horn (the only one that is mobile) can pass under its opponents horn. When an
advantage is recognized, the log can only be turned by the owner of the kwaang
that is in a position of power (see video 8). This rule is ambiguous and should be
discussed, since it has important implications. Is this because the advantages are
not always discernible and one needs to facilitate recognition when they occur?
How does one explain the withdrawal of the disadvantaged players influencing
abilities? In light of what has been said above about vibration and the uncertainty
surrounding the effects of its propagation, there is no guarantee that if the losing
player continues rolling his stylus, he will not be compounding his disadvantage.
Vibrations tend to favor the beetle in the dominant position. But to understand the
log rule, it is also necessary to understand how its manipulation affects the circuit
already patiently established by both players. This is the first time in the game that
the players work is not merely a matter of emitting signals, but of supporting the
action kinetically, by influencing the very support on which the interaction takes
place. It is only after the intensity of the circuit has been established and is
considered sufficiently stable that one may enter into this balance of power.
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Video 8. The beetle lifting its opponent is clearly

recognized as getting the upper hand on it. The owner
of the latter thus has to stop manipulating the log.

At this stage, the two players transmit different forces to the log, which creaks and
turns more or less from side to side. The position of the log results from the
tension between two forcesbetween the systems two human poles. It is no longer
the shared management and joint production of a vibratory circuit; this has been
installed. Now a pure balance of power is being expressed between two divergent
human interests. This can be visible as such, but its expression may not be
accepted in those terms for very longas an expression of something human (that
is, as merely the negotiation between the human components of the fight).
Manipulating the log enables one of the two players to take the vibratory lead. The
player whose beetle is regarded as having the advantagethat is, the one that has at
least succeeded in passing its lower horn under that of its opponent so that it may
grip it with its pincersgains the exclusive ability to give the circuit a new injection
of tension. Having the vibratory lead does not mean having greater ability to
control ones beetle. Strictly speaking, it is the beetle itself that has the lead and has
earned its player a vibratory advantage. And when the players detect a decrease in
intensity they do not hesitate to take up their styli to reactivate the whole circuit
(see figure 10).

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Figure 10. The player on the left is said to have the vibratory upper hand.

Conclusion
In kwaang fighting, communication between humans and beetles takes the form of

a large circuit transmitting and circulating intensity, composed of five loops: a)

two interspecific loops linking humans to insects, establishing contact by means of
the stylus, b) two monospecific loops, one concerning exchanges between the two
kwaang, and the other involving the two players in a balance-of-power situation and
subjecting the players to changes in intensity, and c) an inclusive circuit represented
by the wooden log, ensuring that the whole system reacts to the activity of the
beetles and the two human competitors (see Appendix I).
One might wonder if these loops are executed in series, in parallel, or even
according to a third mode. Here we are no doubt reaching the limit of the
electricity metaphor. If they were executed in series, player As vibration on the log
would affect beetle A, which would transmit to beetle B, inducing an action from
player B and so on. And yet this modelbased on a chain of causes and effects
with unvarying intensity from one end of the circuit to the otherdoes not work. In
the case of parallel execution, the intensities produced by the different loops would
have to add up or accumulate but this is not the case either. There is indeed a
chronological chain of processes and methods for sustaining a vibratory field, but
this field is highly random in its connections as well as in its intensity circulation
modalities. It is absolutely essential for the interaction to be made longer than it
would be in the wild, and this is why players need to experiment with different
methods and vary the means of sustaining the systems conductivity.
In this context, at what point can it be said that players communicate with their
kwaang? The beetle ultimately imposes its sensory universe while leaving humans
with the possibility of appending code, meaning, and technique. The player is not
attached to his insect in a purely mechanical way. Neither does he form one body
with his coleopteron like a horseman and horse that share kinetic conventions and
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habits. The contact modalities of kwaang fighting do not allow themselves to be

exhausted by the existing anthropological models ordinarily invoked to explain
problems of cooperation at the boundary of the self (distributed cognition in the
work of Edwin Hutchins [1996], the cybernetic nature of the self in that of
Gregory Bateson [1972], or the ecological psychology of James J. Gibson [1977]).
The gap between the motor and perceptual worlds of men and beetles is quite
large and can only be narrowed by broadened communication theory that can
more particularly build on a cognitive ethology applied to beetles. To cross the gulf
separating them from their insects, players must submit to an unusual mode of
communication. The kwaang impose their universe of low-frequency vibrations. In
this context, beetle fighting is very much a theater of forced cooperation, but this
cooperation is expressed in a circular way. The beetle is encouraged to cooperate
with the man when the man is compelled by the insect to change his frame of
reference and navigate an uncertain vibration field. The human player cannot rely
on a simple rational understanding of the game. He is only allowed to shift from
one level of communication to the other when the beetle is stuck in the sole
modulation of physical magnitudes. Yet, between the two, there is no need for any
sharing of mental images, representations, or joint attention frameworks. It is
communication of a completely different kind, essentially based on establishing a
vibratory flow, a vehicle for signals whose emergence, effects, and interpretability
are never certain (see figure 12).

Figure 12. A successful fight that is obviously stimulating both the players
and the gamblers to frenetically negotiate odds and amounts!

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280 | Stphane RENNESSON, Emmanuel GRIMAUD, and Nicolas CSARD

Appendix 1. Kwaang fighting devices communications circuits diagrams. 12

12. A PDF of the Kwaang fighting devices communications circuit diagrams is available
online: http://www.haujournal.org/extras/kwaang_circuit_diagrams.pdf.
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Pfungst, Oskar. (1911) 1965. Clever Hans (The horse of Mr. Von Osten). New
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Rennesson, Stphane, Emmanuel Grimaud, and Nicolas Csard. 2011. Jeu
d'espces: Quand deux scarabes se rencontrent sur un ring. In Humains nonhumains: Comment repeupler les sciences sociales, edited by Sophie Houdart
and Olivier Thiry, 3039. Paris: La Dcouverte.
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Communication with horses, whales, apes, and people. Annals of the New
York Academy of Sciences.
Shannon, Claude E. 1948. A mathematical theory of communication. Bell
System Technical Journal 27: 379423.
Simondon, Gilbert. 2010. Communication et information. Paris: Editions de la
Transparence.
Von Frisch, Karl. 1950. Bees: Their vision, chemical sense and langage. Ithaca,
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286 | Stphane RENNESSON, Emmanuel GRIMAUD, and Nicolas CSARD

Le scarabe magntique : Les circuits de communication du jeu

de kwaang en Thalande
Rsum : Les combats de scarabes en Thalande constituent une sorte de
laboratoire o on exprimente des formes de coopration pour le moins insolites
entre humains et insectes. A partir de la description des modes de contacts entre
les joueurs et leurs animaux, les auteurs montrent comment des cas dinteractions
interspcifiques obligent prciser ce quon entend par communication. Quand
on songe que les capacits cognitives et perceptives des deux tres sont fort
diffrentes, on peut se demander ce que peuvent partager les amateurs et leurs
coloptres. Les amateurs saccordent toutefois pour dire que leurs gladiateurs
miniatures ne peuvent pas tre dresss mais quen tirant profit de leur grande
sensibilit aux vibrations, on peut maximiser leur potentiel martial. En sappuyant
sur un questionnement radical des notions de signal et de bruit, larticle montre
jusqu quel point les scarabes relancent le dbat autour de lexistence de formes
de communication pr-signaltique.

Stphane RENNESSON teaches anthropology at the Institut dEtudes Politique in

Paris. As the result of long participatory fieldwork in Thailand as a boxer, a trainer,
and a promoter, he has written an in-depth ethnography of the world of Thai
boxing in its country of origin. More recently, he has been working on numerous
other games that are very much structured and that have met popular success in
Thailand. He is mainly interested in competitions that require uncanny
collaborations between humans and various animals, studying animal fights (beetles,
cocks, fishes, buffaloes) and birds singing contests.
Emmanuel GRIMAUD has worked on various subjects, including the first
ethnography of the Bombay film studios (Bollywood film studio, CNRS Editions,
2004), a duplicate of Gandhi (Le sosie de Gandhi, CNRS Editions, 2007), Indian
robotics and mechanical gods (Dieux et robots, LArchange Minotaure, 2008), and
Japanese humanoids (Le jour o les robots mangeront des pommes, Petra, 2012).
More recently his research has been focusing on the anthropology of eye
movements. He also founded the ARTMAP (www.artmap-research.com), an
international collective of researchers and artists experimenting with technology
between art and science. He received the bronze medal of the CNRS in 2011.
Nicolas CSARD has done ethnographic and ethnohistorical research mainly in
Indonesia. His PhD thesis has shed light on the processes that, for a century, have
led the northeastern nomadic groups of Borneo to transform their subsistence
ways of life in favor of commercial strategies, a sedentary lifestyle, and the adoption
of new social dispositions. For several years he has examined the interactions
between societies and their environment, as well as the management of natural
resources, through the field of ethnoentomology. Drawing on a comparative
analysis of interactions between people, insects, and the natural environment at
large, he takes interest in ecological, biological, and technological dimensions of
people's relations to nature, both on pragmatic and symbolic standpoints.
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