Great Falls tribune. [volume] (Great Falls, Mont.) 1921-current, 1922-10-21
The Haskin Letter
By FREDERICK
J. HASKLN
INSECTS AND THEIR SENSES

Some moths, for instance, attract
Or. McTndoo carried $50 Promethea
eocoous from Massachusetts, to small
islands of the Florida Keys. The
moths were then sufficiently far from
their regional home, the doctor figured,
so that no other specimens would in
terfere with his observations. The
female moths were kept in glass jars,
some turned upside down on the sand,
and some with netting over the top.
The males were released at various
distances. They quickly found their
way to the females in the jars covered
with netting, but non came to the
lars with mouths buried i'll the sand.
As the females in all the jars were
equally visible, DIR. McIndoo found it
reasonable to believe that sight had
little or nothing to do with the %attrac-
ton of the male moth to the female:
He believes that emanations. passed
away from the jars whose mouths were
covered with netting and that these
emanations were sensed IN some way
by the male moths. AS delicate odors
| could not escape through the jars with
mouths in the sand, the signals from
these jars were disregarded.
VARIOUS AM QuVES
To support his theory that the OIL
| factory sense dominates in insect life,
DIR. McIndoo brings the evidence OF
other scientists. Wheeler, he says,
found that different species of ants
have different odors that can be dis
tinguished ever by the feeble nose OF
a human being. The odor of one
| species is described as being pungent
| and ethereal; two others are smoky;
| others are like rotten cocoanuts; and
| still another species of ant has a smell
| reminiscent of lemon geranium.
Another scientist, Miss Fielde. thinks
that the mother ant transmits q
| family odor to all of her offspring,
| and she says that ants can d~ifferentiate
the innate odors peculiar to the spe-
! eies, sex, caste, and individual, and
also the acquired odor of the nest and
environment.
Each ant, she claims, has three
odors: "a a scent deposited by her
feet, forming an individual trail, where
by she traces her own steps; % ar
inherent and inherited Odor, mani
tested over her whole body, identical
in quality for queens and workers OF
the same lineage, and a means Tor the
recognition of blood relations; and 90
q nest odor. consisting of the commin-
gled odors of all the members of the
| colony and used to distinguish their
nest from those of aliens.
Besides all this. Miss Felde puts
forth the theory that ants can ever
detect progressive odors due to change
| of psychological condition with the age
of the individual ant.
A human being can dimly understand
this specialized use of the sense OF
smell. With his dulled o~lfactory or.
cans he can, 1t has been pointed out
! make the crude distinction between
a horse and q COW. or a cat and 6
dog. BY finer work, a scientist dis.
covers that drones, workers and queens
in a hive all have peculiar oders that
a human nose can learn to distinguish
and that lighter odors about which
man can only speculate must guide
the actions of insects at astounding
distances.
In fact, Mr.. McIndoo believes thai
the world Of such insects as the ant
and bee is not only a world Of odors
but that the olfactory sense is so i'm
portant to them that they cannot ex'
list if it is destroyed. Yet man thinks
bis sense Of smell is acute when he cal
distinguish b~lindf0lded between an on
ion and a violet.