Ant egg

“ If any rain comes, or the hill is broken, the nurses run to carry the babies to a safe place.
When the larva is full grown, it spins around itself a little fine net, which wraps it all up. When people see these white bundles in the ant-hills, they call them “ant-eggs.” They are not eggs. They are pupa-cases. In them the baby ants are getting ready to come out, with legs and wings, as full-grown ants.
The pupa-cases are of several sizes. The largest ones are for queens and drones. The next size holds large workers; the smallest cases hold the smallest workers. ”

“ That is, one set of differences in structures and instincts is determined by nutrition before the egg is laid, and a further set of differences in structures and instincts is determined by nutrition after the egg is laid.
We come now to the extreme case—that of the ants. Is it not probable that the process of differentiation has been similar? There are sundry reasons for thinking so. With ants as with wasps and bees—the workers occasionally lay eggs; and an ant-community can, like a bee-community, when need be, produce queens out of worker-larvæ: presumably in the same manner by extra feeding. ”

“ If you disturb an ant-hill you will see the workers hastening to carry away and put in a safe place certain cylindrical bodies having somewhat the appearance of grains of wheat and very inappropriately called ant-eggs. They are not the eggs of the insect, which are in reality much smaller ”

“ All children have observed the little neuter, [19] or working ant, carrying in its mandibles an egg almost as large as itself with an air of extreme hurry and absorption, to lay it in the sun till the warmth hatches it into a baby ant. ”

“ Look carefully at the pictures, and you will see that almost every ant is carrying an egg. They know that if they lose the eggs all the young ants inside the eggs will be lost too.
While ants do not seem to have a very keen sense of hearing, their sense of smell is very strong. ”

“ When full grown they turn into pupæ, sometimes naked, sometimes covered with a silken cocoon, constituting the so-called "ant-eggs." After remaining some days in this state, they emerge as perfect insects. In many cases, however, they would perish in the attempt, if they were not assisted, and it is very pretty to see the older ants helping them to extricate themselves, carefully unfolding their legs and smoothing out the wings, with truly feminine tenderness and delicacy. ”

“ They do not obtain their food directly from the tree, but keep brown scale insects in the cells, which suck the juices from the tree, and secrete a honey-like fluid that exudes from a pore on the back, and is lapped up by the ants. In one cell eggs will be found, in another grubs, and in a third pupæ, all lying loosely. In another cell, by itself, a queen ant will be found, surrounded by walls made of a brown waxy-looking substance, along with about a dozen scale insects to supply her with food. ”

“ These little white things are not ants' eggs, but ants' babies. They are the already hatched and partly grown young ants, the larvæ and pupæ, which are so well looked after by the nurse ants. For these young ants are quite helpless, like young bees in the brood-cells in a honey-bee hive. And they have to be fed chewed food, and as they have no legs and so can't walk, they have to be carried from the cool dark nurseries up into the warmer lighter chambers for air and heat every day almost, and then carried back down again. See how gently the nurse ant holds this baby in its jaws ”

“ The cells of bees, wasps, spiders, and of the various coralline insects, equally astonish us, whether we attend to the materials or to the architecture.
But the conduct of the ant, and of some species of the ichneumon fly in the incubation of their eggs, is equal to any exertion of human science. The ants many times in a day move their eggs nearer the surface of their habitation, or deeper below it, as the heat of the weather varies ”

“ Surely this is so: "The ants are a people not strong but they prepare their meat in the summer"; on this account they have their place among the "four things which are little upon the earth, but they are exceeding wise," and we do well to consider their ways and learn the lesson which they teach us.
Before we quite leave the ant-city, I should like to tell you that the eggs of ants grow while hatching, to accommodate themselves to the increasing size of the tiny creature within them. There are many interesting things to be observed about the eggs of insects ”

“ In one place, we observe an assemblage of eggs, in another place, some of the workers seem occupied in following an ant of larger size than the rest;—this is the mother, or at least one of the females, for there are always several in each ant-hill:—she lays as she walks, and the guardians, by whom she is surrounded, take up her eggs, or seize them at the very moment of her laying them ”

“ This "honey-dew" which the mealy-bugs make and give off from their bodies is a sweetish syrupy fluid of which almost all ants, even those most fiercely carnivorous, are very fond. And as the mealy-bugs and plant-lice that make the honey-dew are quite defenceless, soft-bodied, mostly wingless and rather sedentary insects, the bright-witted ants establish colonies, or "herds," of them in their nests, or visit and protect colonies of them living on plants near the ant-nest. Some kinds of ants even build earthen "sheds," or tents, over groups of honey-dew insects on plant-stems. ”

“ The ant lays eggs in the manner of common flies; from these eggs are hatched small maggots, or worms without legs; these, after a short time, change into large white aureliae, or chrysales, which are usually called ant's eggs. When a nest of these creatures is disturbed, however great their own danger, the care they take of their offspring is remarkable: each takes in its foreceps, a young one, often larger than itself and carries it off.
These little insects form to themselves, with much industry and application, of earth, sticks, leaves, &c. ”

“ These insects soon propagate by eggs, which renew and increase the number of maggots so much that one such jar will maintain a nightingale.—Author.
76 Many persons who are not in a situation to buy ants’ eggs (improperly so called, since they are the pupæ in their cocoons) , will doubtless be glad to know the method used for getting them out of the ant-hill. A fine sunny day in summer is chosen, and, provided with a shovel we begin by gently uncovering a nest of the large wood ants (Formica rufa, Linnæus) , till we arrive at the eggs ”

“ One species of ant raids the nest of another, overpowers the able-bodied inhabitants, slays or incapacitates a certain number, and carries away with it to its own nest as many of the helpless pupæ as it is able to. For a great many years—thousands probably—these combats and carrying off of spoil had been observed, but it had always been imagined that the pupæ—or ants’ eggs, as they are commonly called—were taken as provisions, merely to be stored in the nest of the victor, and there eaten at leisure. ”

“ Throughout these masses were numerous ants belonging to the smallest division of the workers, which do not engage in leaf-carrying. Along with them were pupae and larvae, not gathered together, but dispersed, apparently irregularly, throughout the flocculent mass. This mass, which I have called the ant-food, proved, on examination, to be composed of minutely subdivided pieces of leaves, withered to a brown colour, and overgrown and lightly connected together by a minute white fungus that ramified in every direction throughout it. ”

“ Periodically the master Ants, if we may so call them, set off{410} on a slave-hunting expedition. They find out the nest of the special Ant whose aid they need, penetrate into it, and bear off the pupæ, or “ants’ eggs,” as they are popularly called. These are carried to their new home, and are speedily hatched. They know no other home, and, led by instinct, set to work as industriously as if they had never been removed. ”

“ Not only all kinds of ants, and other insects, but birds, and carnivorous reptiles, are upon the hunt for them, and the inhabitants of many countries eat them.
From one of the most active, industrious, and rapacious; from one of the most fierce and implacable little animals in the world, they are in this state changed into an innocent helpless insect, incapable of making the least resistance to the smallest ant. The ants are to be seen on every side in infinite numbers, of various species and sizes, dragging these annual victims to their different nests. ”

“ They gather the eggs of the aphides, carry them into a specially built nursery, attend them carefully until the young aphides are hatched out, and then carry them to the shrubs most liked by them for food. Some strange sense enables them to recognize one another—an ant of the same species, but coming from another nest, is immediately recognized as a stranger, and at once attacked. If the eggs of one ant colony are hatched out in another of the same species, the young ants are at once known to be strangers and intruders. ”

“ The young ant is conducted by them throughout the whole nest, and shown all the devious passageways and corridors. When it makes its first visit into the outside world, it is always accompanied by several chaperons. This parental love, if I may use the expression, is even extended to the unhatched eggs. If an ants' nest is disturbed by a stroke of a spade or hoe, the little inhabitants will at once begin to remove eggs, pupæ, and young to a place of safety.
This parental love is even evinced by insects who never see their offspring. ”

“ Still, making every allowance for the development of extraordinary mental power in some species of ants, there can be little doubt of the purely automatic beginnings and nature of most, if not all, of the acts of ordinary ant existence. The young ant, wasp, or bee, will begin its labors and discharge them as perfectly at the beginning of its existence as a perfect insect, as at the close of life. ”

“ It nests upon rocks or bare knolls and flat city roofs. Its food consists of insects taken on the wing; and so greedy is the bird that when food is plentiful, it fills its stomach almost to bursting. Ants (except workers) have wings and fly as they are preparing to propagate. In destroying ants night hawks rank next to, or even with, the woodpeckers, the acknowledged ant-eaters among birds.
Fig. ”

“ This part, often more than three inches in length, is now a vast matrix of eggs, which make long circumvolutions through numberless slender serpentine vessels: it is also remarkable for its peristaltic motion, (in this resembling the female ant; see Gould’s Account of English Ants, p. 22.) which, like the undulations of water, produces a perpetual and successive rise and fall over the whole surface of the abdomen, and occasions a constant extrusion of the eggs, amounting sometimes in old females to sixty in a minute, or eighty thousand and upwards in twenty-four hours. ”

“ The creature lives in the tree-tops and is diurnal in habits. It moves along the branches with great rapidity, either in an upright position or inverted like a sloth, the prehensile tail being used constantly. Ants form the food, and as these ascend even the highest trees, the little ant-eater has a never-failing and abundant supply; they are gathered up hurriedly as the little creature moves quickly along.
One day an army of carnivorous ants invaded our quarters while we were busily occupied preparing the specimens collected during the morning. ”

“ When I stop I see the side of the road swarms with insect life, ants of various, kinds, black and red, small and big, pegging along the [Pg 126] level, and up and down trees, as if the world depended on each individual's particular bustling. There are white ant hills like ragged heaps of raw chocolate—very hard and strong. ”

“ The food of ants consists of insects—great numbers of which they destroy—of honey, honey-dew, and fruit; indeed, scarcely any animal or sweet substance comes amiss to them. Some species—such, for instance, as the small brown garden ant—ascend bushes in search of aphides. ”

“ Its head, flat and square, is armed with two moveable crooked horns, whose singular structure shews how admirable Nature is, even in the least of her works.
This insect is the most subtle and dangerous enemy the ant has; the plans which he forms to ensnare his prey, are very ingenious. He mines a portion of land in the form of a funnel, at the bottom of which he waits to seize the ants, which coming by chance to the edge of the precipice, are thence hurried down to their merciless foe. ”

“ I suppose the eggs are removed as soon as laid, for I never found any along with the queen ant. If the tree be shaken, the ants rush out in myriads, and search about for the molester. This case is not like the last one, where the tree has provided food and shelter for the ants, but rather one where the ant has taken possession of the tree, and brought with it the scale insects ”

“ On careful investigation these insects will prove to be nearly all ants, and, perhaps, to belong to a single species. Looking about on the ground, an unusual activity will be noticed in the ant-hills. This is the swarming of the ants. The autumnal brood of females has appeared, and this is their marriage day.
The history of a formicarium, or ant's nest, is as follows: The workers, only, hibernate, and are found early in the spring, taking care of the eggs and larvæ produced by the autumnal brood of females. ”