The new dominion. [volume] (Morgantown, W. Va.) 1876-1904, 1883-05-26
SOMETHING ABOUT ANTS.


work TO find out the daily life and du-
ties Of creatures so little as ants. Yet
the scientific men who have spent years
in the study have learned not. only their
habits, how they make their homes and
bring up their babies, what they eat and
how they fight, bit have even gone so
far rs TO discover some of their senti-
ments and emotions. A late book on
animal intelligence, published by the
Appletons, tells some very interesting
things about them.
One naturalist who has studied their
ways found that some of them feel
| friendship. and pity for suffering, and
| he tells it thus:
"0ne day, watching small column
Of these ants, placed little stone on
one of them to secure it. They rushed
to the rescue; some bit at the stone
and tried TO move ii, others seized the
prisoner by the legs and tugged with
such force that thought the legs would
be pulled of, but they persevered till
| they got the captive free. / next COW
cred one up with piece of clay, leav-
ing only the ends OF its antennm pro-
| jecting. II was soon discovered by its
| fellows, which set to work Immediately,
and ny biting of pieces of the clay soon
| liberated it. The excitement and ardor'
with which they carried on their unilag-
| ging exertions for the rescue of their
comrade could not have been greater if
they had been human beings"
Another writer gives a curious ac-
count Of how an ant-the Texas har-
vesting ant-sleeps and awakes
TO illustrate the soundness of the
sleep, take the quill-pen with which |
write and apply the feather end of it to
an ant who is asleep. She has chosen n
Little. oval dcprereioajn tho surface, and
lies with face toward the lamp. Her
legs are drawn up close TO the body.
She is perfectly still. gently draw the
feather tip along the body, 'stroking
with the fur, If ] may SO say. There is
no notion After trying in vain to
waken her by various motions of the
feather end of the pen, he finally
arouses the sleeper by sharp touch Of
the quill. "She stretches out her head,
then her legs, which she also shakes,
steps nearer to the light and begins to
cleanse herself. This act invariably
follows the waking of ants from sleep.
(Another good example from the ants,
you see.) II have several times seen
the ants yawning after awakening. l
use this word for lack OF one which
more accurately expresses the behavior.
The action is very much like that of the
human animal; the mandibles are
thrown open, the tongue is
sometimes thrust out, and the limbs
stretched with the appearance at least
of that tension which accompanies the
yawn in the genus homo"
The old story Of ants indulging in
games and play was for long time
thought to be a fable, but grave scien-
tific gentlemen of our day have seen it,
and we shall have to believe it now,
queer as it seems. The old story was
told by Huber, who s'saw these ants on
fine day assembled on the surface Of
their nests, and behaving in way that
he could only explain as Stimulating fes-
tiyal sports or other games. They
raised themselves on their hind legs,
embraced each other with their four
legs, seized each other by the antenn@,
feet, or mandibles, and wrestled, but all
in friendliest fashion. They then let
go, ran after each other, and played
hide-and-seek. When one was victori-
Gus, it seized all the others in the ring
and tumbled them over like nine-pins. 2
So much for the old writer; now says
the new: s'The players caught each other
by the feet or jaws, rolled over each
other on the ground like boys playing,
pulled each other Inside the entrance Of
their nest, only to come out again, and
SO on All this was done without bad
temper, or any squirting of poison, and
it was clear that all the rivalry was
friendly"
1t must be startling thing to break
twig from a tree and see the live ants
run out. Yet it may be done in New
South Wales, where one family of ants
regularly makes its home inside the
branches, digging out the pith even to
the twigs, and not harming the life Of
the tree in the least.
That is no more curious home than
one made by another family out of tree
leaves glued together in some way to
form hollow ball, and lined with
sort Of paper, the whole hanging to the
branch.
To build bridge would surely seem
to be beyond the power of even SO wise
little creatures as ants, yet they have
accomplished this hard thing in more
than one way. One party of ants,
wishing to go up into a tree, for reasons
of their own, found their way stopped
by broad cloth, soaked in tobacco
water. Did they give it upp Far from
| it They went back to the ground,
where each ant provided itself with
small ball of earth, returned, and laid
the balls side by side till they formed a
bridge over the cloth, and went up and
down it as long as they choose.
Again, man who wished to keep
ants out of favorite tree put ring of
birdlime around the trunk, but they,
too, built bridge of earth and little
stones, which carried them safely over.
At another time some ants which
were imprisoned when up in tree, by
q ring Of tar around the trunk, built
their bridge. rot Of earth and stones.