Red ant

“ All this time we have been speaking only of the red ant; but there are any number of different kinds in Europe, not to mention the enormous ants of the tropics, who march in such armies that the people fly before them, deserting their villages. Different species differ totally in their habits and ways of building and living. The greater number of species live apart, and not in a [Pg 85] community with an elaborately constructed house like the red ant. The little black ant is the commonest in this country, and the busiest and most active. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Ant-heaps are only red when they are built of red soil. In parts of the Bechwanaland Protectorate, where the Cape hartebeest used to be common, the ant-heaps are a glaring white. In East Africa, in different portions of which territory hartebeests of three species are very numerous, all of which are bright red in colour, red ant-heaps are certainly not a conspicuous feature in all parts of the country, and there were, if my memory serves me, very few ant-heaps of any size on the plains where I met with either Coke's, Neumann's, or Jackson's hartebeests. ”

“ The ant of temperate regions bears the same relation to the tropical ant that the savage of the tropical zone bears to the civilised communities of more temperate climes. The ant of the villa garden and the red ant of the woods are but very ignorant savages compared with the termite, for while the one inhabits caves and tunnels in the ground, and the other rough huts, thatched with the spines of the fir, the white ant dwells in a palace far larger in proportion to its size than the abodes of the most powerful monarchs of the human race to that of their inhabitants. ”

“ There are three or four kinds in every house;—the fourmi fou (mad ant) , a little speckled yellowish creature whose movements are so rapid as to delude the vision; the great black ant which allows itself to be killed before it lets go what it has bitten; the venomous little red ant, which is almost too small to see; and the small black ant which does not bite at all,—are usually omnipresent, and appear to dwell together in harmony. They are pests in kitchens, cupboards, and safes ”

“ Why, the common red ant of England builds a nest of any rubbish it can find, such as straw, leaves, and bits of wood mixed with earth, often as large as a small hay-cock. But this is a trifle, compared with some tropical ant-hills. Travellers in Guiana describe ant-hills which are fifteen or twenty feet high, and thirty or forty feet wide at the base. You might well fancy they were houses for elephants, instead of for ants."
"I should imagine they must be elephantine ants," remarked Harry. ”

“ The small red ant and the small black ant, both of which feed on animal substances, would sometimes crowd around a fly, a spider, a small lizard, or any other small animal or insect which might lie dead upon the floor; and by degrees, a number sufficient to move their prey would assemble, and they would convey it slowly along, even up a white-washed wall, if the load was not heavier than usual. It was a most unpleasant sight to watch these insects clinging to their burthen on all sides of it, and so closely packed as to appear to be one shapeless mass of moving substance. ”

“ The most formidable of all is the great red ant or Dimiya.4221 It is particularly abundant in gardens, and on fruit trees; it constructs its dwellings by glueing the leaves of such species as are suitable from their shape and pliancy into hollow balls, and these it lines with a kind of transparent paper, like that manufactured by the wasp. ”

“ By-and-by the brown ants hatch out in the strange nest, and never having known any other life except that of slavery, accommodate themselves to it readily enough. The red ant, however, is still only an occasional slaveowner; if necessary, he can get along by himself, without the aid of his little brown servants. Indeed, there are free states and slave states of red ants side by side with one another, as of old in Maryland and Pennsylvania: in the first, the red ants do their work themselves, like mere vulgar Ohio farmers ”

“ Another nuisance is the nest of the large red ant; these collect and glue the leaves together, forming a cavity for the deposition of their larvæ. The best mode of destroying them is to hang a portion of some animal substance, such as the entrails of a fowl, fish, &c., to the end of a pole, thrust through and protruding from the branches; the ants will run along the pole and collect in immense quantities around the bait, when, by a lighted faggot, they can be burned by thousands. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Ants not only furnish food to man for his birds, but also food for himself, in both the pupa and imago states. Nicoli Conti, who traveled in India in the early part of the fifteenth century, says the Siamese eat a species of Red-ant, of the size of a small crab, which they consider a great delicacy seasoned with pepper.544 At the present day, the pupæ of a species of Ants are a costly luxury with these people. ”

“ Many ants live in the interior of various plants. The plant generally benefits as much as the insect by this arrangement, so that there is a mutual dependence between the two, which in some cases is carried to such an extent that the life of one or both seems a necessary part of that of the other. In Borneo, for instance, a certain large tuber which grows on the branches of aged trees is always found inhabited by a certain red ant, of small size, but fierce disposition, which rushes out and attacks anyone who ventures at all near its dwelling. ”

“ You break away this gallery, and find a troop of white ants hurrying back and forth, extending their road and boring or furrowing the door. But as soon as they are exposed, they run hither and thither in great terror, seeking for their hiding-place. If they cannot reach it, they are lost. The red ants attack them, and seizing their soft bodies with their nippers, after a short struggle bear them writhing away to their holes. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There is another ant, which is commonly called the red Driver, but it is quite distinct from the above-mentioned black species. It is an unwholesome-looking, watery-red thing with long legs, and it abides among trees and bushes. ”

“ Holding a microscope to the first-mentioned red ant, I saw that, though he was assiduously gnawing at the near fore-leg of his enemy, having severed his remaining feeler, his own breast was all torn away, exposing what vitals he had there to the jaws of the black warrior, whose breast-plate was apparently too thick for him to pierce; and the dark carbuncles of the sufferer's eyes shone with ferocity such as war only could excite. ”

“ The following varieties are distinguished, bearing the prefix Sirĕum.
Sirĕum Akas, is a large black ant found on the ground. It bites very hard, and causes much pain, drawing blood. ⁠”⁠Atĕul, the itchy ant, causes prurience, of red colour, and on the ground. ⁠”⁠Kilang, brown and small, found on the ground; when it bites or emits its saliva upon a wound in the flesh, it causes it to be difficult to heal. ⁠”⁠Lada, the peppery ant, found on trees and gives a smarting bite. ⁠”⁠Upas, poisonous ant, black colour, found on trees, is of small size but gives a very painful bite. ”

“ We also observe, not unfrequently, the ants dragging after them the entire body of some enemy they had killed some time before, fastened to their feet in such a way as not to allow of their disengaging themselves.
"Supposing the ants to be of equal size, those furnished with a sting have an advantage over those who employ only for their defence their venom and their teeth. The whole of those ants whose peduncles has no scale, but one or two knots, are provided with a sting; the Red Ants, which are said to sting more sharply than the rest, possess both these sorts of arms. ”

“ The “nurse” workers in the nest can then draw their supplies from these “honey-pots.” Very many ants live by preying upon various insects, such as the British “red ants” with well-developed stings (Myrmica rubra) , and the notorious “driver ants” of Africa and America, the old-world species of which belong to Dorylus and allied genera, and the new-world species to Eciton (fig. 2, 2, 3) . ”

“ When the troop feels itself sufficiently strong, it invades the nest of the ashy-black ants, and carries off their offspring, which the latter have not had time to secure. Sometimes, also, the red ants instal themselves in the nest whose inhabitants they have ejected, and transfer their own population to it. The motive for this emigration is that the old nest has become useless, or that it is exposed to some danger. The red ants are not the only ants which thus desert their birth-place. ”

“ I HAVE said that the lands of the Engenho Velho were much infested by the red ants; but indeed scarcely any part of the island of Itamaraca is free from these most noxious insects. They are of a dusky red colour, and vary from one quarter of an inch to one inch in length. Their bite is painful, and they will sometimes fix themselves so firmly with their antennæ, as to leave the points of them in the wound which they have made. Their food is entirely vegetable. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Black ants live in the trunks beneath, and form paths up the furrowed, moss-covered bark; on the wind-dried branches and along the withered twigs the male ants assemble in swarming-time, giving the group of ancient trees an extraordinarily lifelike appearance.
But spiders spin their webs from every knot and curve, and in them ant corpses hang thickly in bunches. In one stump a redstart has built its nest; in another, which is big and full of touchwood, grow burdocks, mugworts, and nettles. ”