One's own observation tends to confirm the wonderful stories told
by naturalists about ants. They have a claim to rank next to man in
intelligence.
Seven or eight ants once attempted to carry a wasp across the floor. In
the course of the journey they came to a crevice in a plank caused by
a splinter which had been torn off. After repeated attempts to cross
this deep ravine all the ants abandoned the task as hopeless except
one who seemed to be the leader of the enterprise. He went on a tour
of investigation, and soon found that the crevice did not extend very
far in length. He then went after the retreated ants. They obeyed the
summons and returned, when all set about helping to draw the wasp
around the crevice. This little incident proves the ant is possessed of
the power of communicating its wishes to others. Ants have been seen
to bite off the legs of a cockroach in order to get it into the narrow
door of their nest. The brain of ants is larger in proportion to their
size than that of any other insect. Naturalists think that they have
memory, judgment, experience, and feel hatred and affection for their
kind. They are valorous, pugnacious, and rapacious, but also inclined
to be helpful as they assist each other at their toilet. They have a
peculiarity among insects of burying their dead. It is a curious fact
that the red ants, which are the masters, never deposit their dead by
the side of their black slaves, thus seeming to show some idea of caste.
Ants yawn, sleep, play, work, practice gymnastics, and are fond of
pets, such as small beetles, crickets, and cocci, which they entertain
as guests in their homes.
Indeed, ants are social, civilized, intelligent citizens of
successfully governed cities. Even babies are claimed by the state.
Their government is a happy democracy where the queen is "mother"
but not ruler, and where the females have all the power. The queen
is highly honored and at death is buried with magnificence. In her
devotion to her lot in life she pulls off her glittering wings and
becomes a willing prisoner in the best room of a house of many
apartments. Here she is cared for by devoted followers who polish
her eggs, carry them upward to the warmth of the sun in daytime, and
back to the depths of the habitation to protect them from the chill
of night. These eggs are so small as scarcely to be seen by the eye
alone. They are bright and smooth, without any division. It is very
strange, but these eggs will not develop into larvæ unless carefully
nursed. This is effected by licking the surface of the eggs. Under the
influence of this process they mature and produce larvæ. The larvæ are
fed, like young birds, from the mouths of the nurses. When grown they
spin cocoons and at the proper time the nurses help them out by biting
the cases. The next thing the nurses do is to help them take off their
little membranous shirts. This is done very gently. The youngsters are
then washed, brushed, and fed, after which the teachers educate them as
to their proper duties.
It is astonishing how many occupations are followed by these little
busy-bodies whose size and weakness are made up for by their swiftness,
their fineness of touch, the number of their eyes and a powerful acid
which they use in self-defense. Their jaws are so much like teeth that
they serve for cutting, while their antennæ are useful for measurement,
and their front feet serve as trowels with which to mix and spread
mortar. Ants may be said to have the following occupations: Housewives,
nurses, teachers, spinners, menials, marauders, soldiers, undertakers,
hunters, gardeners, agriculturalists, architects, sculptors, road
makers, mineralogists, and gold miners.
Ants keep cows--the aphides--for which they sometimes build stables
and place in separate stalls from the cocci, which they also use. They
make granaries where they store ant rice. If the grain begins to sprout
they are wise enough to cut off the sprout. If it gets wet they have
often been seen carrying it up to the sunshine to dry and thus prevent
sprouting. The honey-ant is herself a storehouse of food in case of
famine. This kind of ant has a distension of the abdomen in which honey
is stored by the workers for cases of need. They inject the honey into
the mouth of the ant. When it is needed she forces it up to her lips by
means of the muscles of the abdomen. It is said that the Mexicans like
to culture honey ants and eat the honey themselves.
The leaf-cutting ant is the gardener. It is devoted to growing
mushrooms or at least a kind of fungi of which it is fond. This
accounts for the beds of leaves it carries to its nest, on which the
fungi develop.
The Roman naturalist, Pliny, gives an account of some ants in India
which extract gold from mines during the winter. In the summer, when
they retire to their holes to escape the heat, the people steal their
gold. McCook has found that we have ants who are mineralogists, as they
cover their hill with small stones, bits of fossils and minerals, for
which they go down like miners more than a yard deep into the earth.
That some kinds of ants are architects has been clearly proven, for an
observer saw an ant architect order his workmen to alter a defective
arch, which they did, apparently to suit his views of how arches should
be constructed!
The ants who act as sculptors work in wood. The red ants of the forest
build storied houses in trees with pillars for support. There is a
little brown ant which makes a house forty stories high; half the
rooms are below ground. There are pillars, buttresses, galleries,
and various rooms with arched roofs. This ant works in clay. If her
material becomes too dry she is compelled to wait for moisture.
The blind ant is a remarkable builder. She makes long galleries above
ground. She does not use cement as some ants do, so she builds rapidly
and her structure is flimsy.
The Saiiva ants of Brazil are skillful masons. They construct chambers
as large as a man's head that have immense domes, and outlets seventy
yards long. The Brazilians say that the Indians, in cases of wounds,
when it was necessary to close them as with stitching, used the jaws of
the Saiiva ant. The ant was seized by the body and placed so that the
mandibles were one on each side of the cut. Then, when pressed against
the flesh, the ant would close the mandibles and unite the two sides of
the cut as firmly as a good stitch would do it. A quick twist of the
ant's body separated it from the head. After a few days the heads were
removed with a knife and the operation was complete.
In view of this we are tempted to say that ants are also _surgeons_,
but die themselves instead of having their patients do so!
A friend who has lived long in Brazil tells me that the Saiiva ants are
so large the nuns in the convents use their bodies to dress as dolls,
making them represent soldiers, brides and grooms, and so forth.
One species of ants do nothing except capture slaves. These are not
able to make their own nests, to feed their larvæ, or even to feed
themselves, but are so helpless they would die if neglected by their
servants. There are three species that keep slaves, but these are not
the only ones who go to war, as the usually peaceful agricultural ants
sometimes get short of seed and go forth to plunder each other's nests.
It is stated that a thousand species of ants are known. No doubt there
is much of interest about each kind. The "Driver Ant" is so choice of
time and labor that, when building its covered roads, if a crevice in
a rock or a shady walk is reached, it utilizes these, then continues
arching its path as before. If a flood comes these ants form into large
balls with the weak ones in the middle, the stronger on the outside,
and so swim on the water.
The ant benefits man by acting as a scavenger, by turning up the
subsoil, and in various other ways. But flowers prefer the visits of
moths and butterflies; as ants are of no service to them in scattering
pollen, they do not wish them to get their honey. Some of the flowers
have found out that ants, though so industrious by reputation, are
lazy about getting out early in the morning for they dislike the dew
very much. Hence by 9 o'clock these wary flowers have closed their
doors. Others take the precaution to baffle ant visitors by holding an
extra quantity of dew on the basins of their leaves, while still others
exude a sticky fluid from their stems which glues the poor ants to the
spot.
Campanula secretes her honey in a box with a lid. Cyclamen presents
curved surfaces, while narcissus makes her tube top narrow. Other
flowers have hooks and hairs by which the ants are warned to seek their
honey elsewhere.