Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1892-06-02
FACTS ABOUT THE Ant.
some Specimens of the Wonderful Intelli


gence of the Little Insect.
The remarllable intelligence of this
little animal has excited the wonder
and admiration of mankind. Darwin
remarked that its brain lis one of the
most marvellous atoms of matter in the
world, perhaps more so than the brain
of man
To test the power of memory in the
ant Sir John Lubbock first tried keep
ing an ant away from its nest for more
than year and then restoring it. He
found that it was Immediately recog-
nized and caressed by its old friends
and associates. He repeated this ez-
pertinent a number of times, and with
the same result. In order to deceive the
ants in the nest foreigner was intro
duced in place of the one taken away,
but the ants Immediately detected the
deception and severely maltreated the
intruder.
On the duration of memory in ants we
have the following observation of Mr.
Belt quoted by Mr.. Romanes: In June.
1852. Mr.. Belts garden was invaded by
lcaf-elting ants. He found their nest
about one h undred yards distant from
his garden. and poured down their bur-
rows IL pIllj III Uio" IL Nthi boAAN
acid mixed with four buckets of water.
The marauding parties were at once
drawn off from the garden to meet the
danger at home. and the whole forIn1-
carium was disorganized, the ants run
ming up and down again in the utmost
perplexity.'
Next day Mr.. Belt found them bnsily
employed brin cling up the ant food from
the old burrows and carrying it to new
" formed ones few yards distant.
These. however. turned out to be only
intended as temporary repositories; for
in a few days both the old and the new
burrows were entirely deserted, 50 that
Mr.. Belt supposed all the ants to have
died. subsequently,. however, he found
that they had migrated TO a new site,
about 200 yards from the old one, and
there established themselves in q new
nest.
Twelve months later the animals
again invaded his garden. and again he
treated them to a strong dose OF carbollc
acid. The ants. as on the previous Oc-
casiOn, were at once Withdrawn from
the garden, and two days afterward he
found all the survivors at work on one
track that led directly to the old nest OF
the year before. where they were buslly
employed in making fresh excavations.
Many were bringing along pieces OF
''ant food from the nest most recently
deluged with carbolic acid to that
w hich had been similarly deluged a
year before and from which all the car
bolic acid had long ago disappeared.
"Others carried the undevelOped white
pupae and Larvae. 1t was a wholesale
and entire migration and the next day
the nest down which he had poured
CARD Ollie acid was entirely deserted.
Mr.. Belt adds: Il afterward found
that when much disturbed and many
of the ants destroyed, the 5 urvivors mi
CRATE to new locality. do not doubt
tn at some of the leading minds in this
formicarium recollected the nest of the
wear before and directed the migration
to it
On the du ration of memory IN ants
Mr. ROmanes further quotes from a
statement of Karl Fogt that for sew
eral successive yea rs ants from a GER
tain nest used to go through certain in
habited streets to chemists shop six
hundred meters distant in order to OBJ
tain access to a vessel filed with sirup
LAS it cannot be supposed that this
vessel was found in successive working
seasons by as many successive accidents
it can only be concluded that the ants
remembered the sirup store from season
to seasOn-ChamberS journal.