Male ant

“ I have no doubt that the primary object of these honey-glands is to attract the ants, and keep them about the most tender and vulnerable parts of the plant, to prevent them being injured; and I further believe that one of the principal enemies that they serve to guard against in tropical America is the leaf-cutting ant, as I have observed that the latter are very much afraid of the small black ants. ”

“ Young ants, like young people, wish to set up for themselves in new homes. They spread their fine wings. Off they fly! Since there is not room in the old hill they will build a new one.
They swarm as the bees do. As they rise high from the earth, they drift off on the wind. Very many of them tire out and die, or are blown into the water, and are drowned. A few live and settle on places fit for a new ant-hill.
It is the mother or queen ant who chooses the new home. When she has found the right place, what do you think she does? She takes off her wings, as she does not care to fly any more. ”

“ The commonest of all the Indian ants, or at any rate the most conspicuous, are the black ones, to be found marauding on every sideboard, and whose normal state seems to be one of criminal trespass. These from their size are perhaps also the most interesting, as it requires little exertion to distinguish between the classes of individuals that in the aggregate make up a nest of ants. There is the blustering soldier, or policeman ant, who goes about wagging his great head and snapping his jaws at nothing ”

“ I was rather fancifully describing her wings, dear, which she takes off herself when she enters the nest, having no further use for them. There are three kinds of ants in every nest: perfect males and females, and the workers. There are many different races of ants, from the great white ant of Africa—a terror to the natives, though in some respects his good friend—down to the little red-and-yellow meadow ants so common among us. ”

“ On the third year after I had noticed the attendance of the ants on my passion-flower, I found that the glands were not so well looked after as before, and soon discovered that a number of scale-insects had established themselves on the stems, and that the ants had in a great measure transferred their attentions to them. An ant would stand over a scale-insect and stroke it alternately on each side with its antennae, whereupon every now and then a clear drop of honey would exude from a pore on the back of the latter and be imbibed by the ant. ”

“ Ants in great quantities and of many varieties of size and colour, from the lion ant, an inch long, to the small brown ant, which can insinuate itself into the most minute crevice. These seize upon whatever is eatable, and devour it in a short time. The ground seems alive with white ants, and the trees swarm with them inside and out; every thing here teems with life. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Stimson Lambert of Owensboro, Kentucky, a careful and accurate observer, informs me that he has frequently observed the large red ants (F. rufa) helping their mutilated or crippled companions.
Ants exhibit another emotion that shows the high development of their psychical or emotional nature. In the tender watchfulness and care of their young they are surpassed by no living creature. As soon as the young ant bursts its pupa case, it is carefully assisted into the world by its foster-mothers. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Belt believes, after much careful observation, that these ants protect the plant they live on from leaf-eating insects, especially from the destructive Saüba ants,—that they are in fact a standing army kept for the protection of the plant! This view is supported by the fact that other plants—Passion-flowers, for example—have honey-secreting glands on the young leaves and on the sepals of the flower-buds which constantly attract a small black ant. ”

“ Ants, though they fall a prey to various animals larger than themselves—such as birds or ant-eaters—yet in their relations with other insects occupy a position of comparative safety, on account of their weapons and pugnacity, and, still more, of their numbers. The driver ants of equatorial Africa, and their South American representatives, the ecitons, are indeed, when they set out on their foraging expeditions, the terror, not only of insects, but of all animal life. ”

“ Still, although the ants of the old world are chiefly carnivorous, or feed on soft substances, and in consequence have not the least idea of hoarding food for the winter, there is one species of Brazilian ant which absolutely builds houses, prepares ground, sows seed, reaps the grain, and stores it away for future consumption. It is the Agricultural Ant, Atta malefaciens, first described by Dr. Lincecum, who watched the insect for twelve years before publishing an account that he knew would at first be received with incredulity. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Some build their nests of clay in trees, and others hollow out abodes under the bark. They vary, too, in size and form. Some are half an inch long; some white, others red and black; some sting furiously. The ants inhabiting trees are those which commit depredations in houses chiefly. The most annoying of the species is the fire-ant—a little creature of a shining reddish colour. They live in the sand, where they form subterranean galleries covered by a sandy dome. They enter houses, and attack eatables of all sorts. ”

“ Nature has wisely provided against the over increase of the ant family. No living thing has a greater variety of enemies than they. In all the divisions of animated nature there are ant-destroyers—ant-eaters! To begin with the mammalia, man himself feeds upon them—for there are tribes of Indians in South America, the principal part of whose food consists of dried termites, which they bake into a kind of “paste!” There are quadrupeds that live exclusively on them, as the ant-bear, already described, and the pangolins, or scaly ant-eaters of the Eastern continent. ”

“ Towards evening he burrows deep holes in the earth, and searches for the larvæ of insects, or he ventures out of the forest, and visits the yucca fields, where he digs up the well-flavored roots. The ant-eater rakes up with his long curved claws the crowded resorts of ants, stretches out his long, spiral, and adhesive tongue, into the midst of the moving swarm, and draws it back covered with a multitude of crawling insects. ”

“ By stroking the aphides with their antennæ they cause them to emit the sweet fluid, which the ants then greedily sip up. Various other insects are looked after by ants in a similar manner, or are found in their nests. It has been observed that some species, like the European Red Ant (Formīca sanguinĕa) , resort to violence to obtain working ants of other species for their own use, plundering the nests of suitable kinds of their larvæ and pupæ, which they carry off to their own nests to be carefully reared and kept as slaves. ”

“ The other is of the same size, but dingy brown in colour, and with hair of a coarser kind. These little ant-eaters both sleep through the day, curled up in the cavity of a tree, or in some fork of the branches, and only display their activity by night.
Thus it is that the ants have no chance of escaping from their numerous enemies. On the earth they are attacked and destroyed by the great ant-eater, in the trees by his brother with the four curving claws. By day one species preys upon them,—by night, another. Go where they will, there is a foe to fall upon them. ”

“ There is, for example, the muniri ant, a great black insect, as large as a wasp and with as venomous a sting. Then there is the fire ant, whose bite is just like a redhot needle piercing the flesh, together with many others. These ants are made the instruments by which the courage of the lad is tested. ”

“ During summer I have seen him on the edge of snowfields and glaciers consuming thousands of unfortunate grasshoppers, flies, and other insects there accumulated. He is particularly fond of ants—tears ant hills to pieces and licks up the ants as they come storming forth to bite him. He tears hundreds of rotten logs and stumps to pieces for grubs, ants and their eggs. He freely eats honey, the bees and their nests. He often amuses himself and makes a most amusing and man-like spectacle by chasing and catching grasshoppers. ”

“ 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. ”

“ But ants destroy timber, infest houses, and cause the spread of aphids that are enemies of garden plants; therefore the ant’s destroyer, the flicker, is a neighborhood benefactor and deserves our heartfelt protection. Professor Beal reports finding 3,000 ants in the stomach of each of two flickers and fully 5,000 in that of another. [72] These insects form almost half of this bird’s food. His long, sticky tongue is especially adapted to their capture. He likes grasshoppers, crickets, beetles, and caterpillars, and while he enjoys fruit, he takes little that is of any value to man. ”

“ The queen ant is not a real queen ruling a little kingdom; she is the mother ant, and lays all the eggs. She is well cared for and protected by the workers. These are the active little ants who do the work. They are happy, too, running about, digging new passageways, clearing the paths to their front doors, and bringing in food, which they store in their granaries. Some ants, sir, build their tunnels very deep underground. A doorway opens into a wide gallery, from which others branch and wind their way down into the dark ground. ”

“ They destroy many noxious insects and reptiles. The severity of their attack is greatly increased by their vast numbers, and rats, mice, lizards, and even the 'Python natalensis', when in a state of surfeit from recent feeding, fall victims to their fierce onslaught. These ants never make hills like the white ant. Their nests are but a short distance beneath the soil, which has the soft appearance of the abodes of ants in England. ”

“ If you saw them carefully closing the doors of their nests at night or in wet weather, and opening them again in the morning, and carrying their young out-of-doors to enjoy the sun on bright days, and a dozen other shrewd habits, you might well imagine they thought it all out. Among the strangest of these ant-philosophers are the driver ants of West Africa, a species which can not endure the hot suns of that region. ”

“ The Ant-Lion.
Ants are disagreeable insects in any country, but especially so in warm tropical climates. Their ugly appearance, their destructive habits, but, above all, the pain of their sting, or rather bite—for ants do not sting as wasps, but bite with the jaws, and then infuse poison into the wound—all these render them very unpopular creatures. A superficial thinker would suppose that such troublesome insects could be of no use, and would question the propriety of Nature in having created them. ”

“ In the course of his remarks Sir John cited many interesting particulars of the ways in which flowers are protected from the incursions of ants, whose visits would be harmful, both from their rifling the stores from the bees, by whom alone they are likely to be fertilised, and from the liability of the latter to desert any species in which their tender probosces were in danger of being seized by ants—it being the nature of an ant to grapple any pointed thing directed towards her. ”