Ant colony

“ In forest shooting the red ant is one of the most dreaded pests of the jungle. If a colony gets dislodged from some overhanging branch, and is landed in your howdah, the best plan is to evacuate your stronghold as quickly as you can, and let the attendants clear away the invaders. Their bite is very painful, and they take such tenacious hold, that rather than quit their grip, they allow themselves to be decapitated and leave their head and formidable forceps sticking in your flesh. ”

“ It is remarkable that we do not even now know exactly how an ants' nest is begun. Whether they always commence as a colony from some older establishment; whether wandering workers who chance to find a queen under certain circumstances remain with her and begin a new nest; or whether the queen ant, like the queen wasp, forms a cell for herself, and then brings up a few workers, who afterward take upon themselves the labors of the family, as yet we know not. ”

“ The Chungu made new quarters for themselves. When the white ants cast off their colony of winged emigrants a canopy is erected like an umbrella over the ant-hill. As soon as the ants fly against the roof they tumble down in a shower and their wings instantly become detached from their bodies. They are then helpless, and are swept up in baskets to be fried, when they make a very palatable food. ”

“ Their antennæ are larger than the head, their mandibles are well-developed, and the inferior pair of wings is generally as large as the superior.
There are four classes found in the colony of the white ant—the king and queen, who live together in a central chamber near the ground, after having lost their wings; the workers, who build and nurse their young; the soldiers, who never build or nurse, whose duty consists in defending the nest when attacked. Neither the workers nor the soldiers have wings. The largest worker is supposed to be a fifth of an inch long. ”

“ Ants and bees seem to be capable of altering their habits and methods of action much as men do. Bees taken to Australia cease to store honey after a few years' experience of the mild winters. Whole communities of bees sometimes take to theft, and live by plundering hives, first killing the queen to create dismay among the workers. Slave ants attend devotedly to their captors, and fight against their own species. Forel reared an artificial ant-colony made up of five different and more or less hostile species. ”

“ The workers, to be sure, leave the nest in search of food, but the industries of the ant city, the storage of food, the care of eggs and young, and the building of the city itself, go on as if at the bottom of a mine. The queen ants, which lay all the eggs for the colony, and the male ants, who like the drone bees are gentlemen of leisure and don’t do much but loaf, are for most of their lives like the vine tendrils which I have already told you about. Whenever the light falls on them, they turn their heads down stream to the ray ”

“ It will be a good thing to keep a small piece of damp blotting paper in one corner of this room in case the workers want a moist place for the young ones. Fill the groove in the plank with water and the nest is ready.
The best ant colony to take indoors is the one that you find under stones in a pasture. ”

“ In the great majority of ant species the colony arises and develops in the following manner: The single female, or queen, after mating during her marriage flight, descends to the earth, divests herself of her wings, digs a small cell in the soil, or enters some preformed cavity under a stone or in the tissues of a plant, lays a number of eggs, feeds the resulting larvæ with a salivary secretion, and guards and nurses them till they mature and constitute a brood of diminutive workers. ”

“ If you would see the ants to advantage—to your own, that is—you must turn over a pasture stone under which one of the species of small yellow ants has its nest. By thus gently removing the roof, if it is a good-sized stone, the whole colony will be in view at once. The red-ant hill presents difficulties. To dig into it or to pull it apart is quite useless, as the earth falls in and nothing is to be seen but a struggling heap of dusty and indignant ants. It rarely happens that such a hill may be built around a small boulder. ”

“ In the first of these the colony is presided over by a king and queen, representing the fully developed male and female forms, which have once, unlike the workers and soldiers—for, like ants, these insects are divided into castes—possessed fully developed wings, which they have subsequently got rid of in the same way that the queen ant does hers. In the second type the colony possesses several kings and queens, but these, though they marry and produce offspring, are not perfect males and females, and never possess wings. ”

“ Most of the newly developed males are ‘excess baggage.’ During the winged, or mating, stage they fly into the forest where the great majority of them are eaten by birds. When the surviving ants light on a tree, on the ground or on some other object, the wings drop off. Then they apparently wander about aimlessly until they come to an army ant trail which they recognize by the odor and follow it until they come to the colony which has made it. If this happens to be a colony of their own relatives, they probably are killed by the workers. ”

“ The head, growing impatient, called upon a colony of ants which dwelt in the neighbourhood to tunnel a passage through the obstacle, and offered, if they were successful, to marry the chief ant as a recompense for their labours. ”

“ When the sun's rays fell upon the exterior portion of the nest, the ants, who were then on the surface, descended with great rapidity to the bottom of the ant-hill, struck with their antennæ the other ants, ran one after the other, and jostled their companions, who mounted at the moment under the bell glass, and redescended with the same speed, putting in their turn the whole colony in motion, so that we could observe a swarm of workers, filling up all the passages ”

“ This ant is seen everywhere about the suburbs, marching to and fro in broad columns. From its habit of despoiling the most valuable cultivated trees of their foliage, it is a great scourge to the Brazilians. In some districts it is so abundant that agriculture is almost impossible, and everywhere complaints are heard of the terrible pest.
The workers of this species are of three orders, and vary in size from two to seven lines; some idea of them may be obtained from the accompanying wood-cut. The true working-class of a colony is formed by the
Saüba or Leaf-carrying ant.—1, Worker-minor ”

“ The foundress-queen is now waited on by the workers, who supply her with food and spare her all cares of work, so that henceforth she may devote her whole energies to egg-laying. The population of the colony increases fast, and a well-grown nest contains several “queens” and males, besides a large number of workers. One of the most interesting features of ant-societies is the dimorphism or polymorphism that may often be seen among the workers, the same species being represented by two or more forms. ”

“ There is no division into classes amongst its workers, although the difference in size is very great, some being scarcely one-half the length of others. The head and jaws, however, are always of the same shape, and a gradation in size is presented from the largest to the smallest, so that all are able to take part in the common labours of the colony. The chief employment of the species seems to be plundering the nests of a large and defenseless ant of another genus (Formica) , whose mangled bodies I have often seen in their possession as they were marching away. ”

“ The white ant is endowed with wings simply for the purpose of flying away from the colony peopled by its wingless companions, to pair with individuals of the same or other colonies, and thus propagate and disseminate its kind. The winged individuals are males and females, whilst the great bulk of their wingless fraternity are of no sex, and are restricted to the functions of building the nests, nursing and defending the young brood. ”

“ The Rice Ant burrowed under the earth, but no sooner had the many worms and burrowing insects learned of the new colony than they came and ate not only the grown Ants but the baby Ants and even the eggs. ”

“ Here the labourers are protected by the warrior class, who appear also to perform the duties of overlookers, and keep them to their tasks. Each ant, on gaining a leaf, commences with its scissor-like jaws to make a semicircular incision on the upper side. It then takes it into its jaws, and detaches it by a sharp jerk. Having done this, it descends to the ground, and joining its comrades, who have been similarly employed, they return with their loads to the colony. Frequently, however, while an ant is up the tree, the piece of leaf falls to the ground, when it sets to work to cut off another ”

“ One can imagine cases in which the ants during the lapse of long periods of time might pass the seeds of plants from colony to colony, until after a journey of many stages, the descendants of the ant-borne seedlings might find themselves transported to places far removed from the original home of their immediate ancestors. ”

“ There are two species of these ants on Barro Colorado Island in the Panama Canal Zone. Each species has approximately 50 colonies and each colony consists of from a few hundred thousands to more than a million individuals. At the head of each colony is a single queen who lays all the eggs.
There is a new lot of larvae every 33 days—all workers or incompletely developed females. Development is restricted by the amount of food available. Since each brood consists of about 60,000 individuals, a colony theoretically might reach titanic proportions. ”

“ By an admirable reciprocity the ants pay their house rent by protecting the plants from other insects. Some of the European nations have defended their occupation of Oriental countries on the same theory, viz., that they give protection in exchange for a domicile, but there is no evidence that the ant lives on the plant, while colonialism is always a burden to the natives. ”

“ The depots are small nests or dug-outs for the use of ants on long expeditions, ants that require a rest or those that are overtaken by bad weather.
Naturally these communities tend to grow, and they thus come into conflict one with another. “Territorial disputes, along the frontier between two great ant communities, are the usual cause of embittered struggles. The aphis-bearing shrubs are the most fiercely contested. But, in the case of certain species, subterranean domains (the roots of plants) are likewise the region of savage warfare.” Some species live solely by war and plunder. ”

“ In mixed colonies, on the other hand, which, in a state of nature, can be formed only by species of ants of close taxonomic affinities, the insects live together in a single nest and bring up their young in common. Although each of these categories comprises a number of dissimilar types of social symbiosis, and although it is possible, under certain circumstances, as will be shown in the sequel, to convert a compound nest into a mixed colony, the distinction is nevertheless fundamental. ”

“ The fact that they have evolved the idea of setting aside certain members of the colony as honey-makers, and that there is a distinct recognition of a division, or divisions, in the labor of the inhabitants of the nest, evinces very high psychical development.
In a colony of Termes, or white ants, so-called, there are five kinds of individuals. First, the workers. These do all the work of the nest, collecting provisions, waiting on the queen, carrying eggs to the nurseries, feeding the young until they are old enough to care for themselves, repairing and erecting buildings, etc. ”

“ Certain species of Ants, again, make slaves of others, as Huber first observed. If a colony of the slave-making Ants is changing the nest, a matter which is left to the discretion of the slaves, the latter carry their mistresses to their new home. ”

“ They have to provide food for successive broods of hungry youngsters, who, when grown up, will join them in feeding their younger brothers and sisters; or, if they are of the favored few, will enter ant life with wings, and be blown away by the wind a few hundred yards, to become the founders of new colonies. The actual balance of work done by caterpillars and ants respectively is indeed about equal; the only difference being that caterpillars check vegetation by feeding themselves, and ants by feeding their babies; while the balance of mischief done is very much against the ants. ”

“ Myriads of white ants were travelling backwards and forwards; and no doubt a colony had made up its mind to devour as much of the wood-work as possible, and by way of change, shew students how to rapidly get through and digest good books. I saw two volumes of Chambers's Information which had been drilled by these indefatigable workers as neatly as though the holes had been punched by an awl. The covered-way hides the workers from quick-sighted insectivorous birds, especially woodpeckers. Domestic fowls, lizards, toads, armadillos, and tamanduas destroy vast numbers. ”

“ The thin, half-starved, weary line of pioneer civilizers had to penetrate it, and climb this obstructing mountain wall, as a line of traveling ants might climb the wall of a castle. In this case only the strongest of the ants—the strongest in body, the strongest in will—succeeded in getting over and establishing their colony in the country far beyond. ”