F1416    Book contribution:     Darwin, C. R. 1882. [Extracts from Darwin's draft chapter 10 of Natural selection]. In Romanes, G. J., Animal intelligence. London: Kegan Paul Trench & Co.   Text   Image   PDF

usually kept and fed by the ants, to whom they yield a sweet honey-like fluid, which they eject from the abdomen upon being stroked on this region by the antenn of the ants. Mr. Darwin, who has watched the latter process, observes with regard to it, I removed all the ants from a group of about a dozen aphides on a dock plant, and prevented their attendance during several hours. After this interval, I felt sure that the aphides would want to excrete. I watched them for some time through a lens, but

F1416    Book contribution:     Darwin, C. R. 1882. [Extracts from Darwin's draft chapter 10 of Natural selection]. In Romanes, G. J., Animal intelligence. London: Kegan Paul Trench & Co.   Text   Image   PDF

.' Sir John then reduced the interruption to 2/5 of an inch, so that the ants could even touch the glass cell with their antenn yet all day long the ants continued to go the long way round rather than face the drop. Next, therefore, he took still longer sticks and tapes, and arranged them as before, only horizontally instead of vertically. He also placed some fine earth under the glass cell containing the larv . The ants as before continued to go the long way round (16 feet), though the drop could

F1416    Book contribution:     Darwin, C. R. 1882. [Extracts from Darwin's draft chapter 10 of Natural selection]. In Romanes, G. J., Animal intelligence. London: Kegan Paul Trench & Co.   Text   Image   PDF

'some of the most anomalous forms of coleopterous insects are those which live solely in the nests of ants.' Sir John Lubbock also, and other observers whom we need not wait to cite, mention similar facts. The Rev. Mr. White says that altogether 40 distinct species of Coleoptera, most of which he has in his own collection, are known to inhabit the nests of various species of ants, and to occur nowhere else. As in all these cases the ants live on amicable terms with their guests, and in some

F1416    Book contribution:     Darwin, C. R. 1882. [Extracts from Darwin's draft chapter 10 of Natural selection]. In Romanes, G. J., Animal intelligence. London: Kegan Paul Trench & Co.   Text   Image   PDF

to the food, and soon a stream of ants was at work busily carrying supplies off to the nest. When they had got to know their way thoroughly, and from thirty to forty were so occupied, I poured some fine mould in front of the hole, so as to cover it to a depth of about an inch. I then took out the ants which were actually in the box. As soon as the ants had recovered from the shock of this unexpected proceeding on my part, they began to run all round and about the box, looking for some other place

F1416    Book contribution:     Darwin, C. R. 1882. [Extracts from Darwin's draft chapter 10 of Natural selection]. In Romanes, G. J., Animal intelligence. London: Kegan Paul Trench & Co.   Text   Image   PDF

case, however, is much more remarkable. Here are aphides, not living in the ants' nests, but outside, on the leaf-stalks of plants. The eggs are laid early in October on the food-plant of the insect. They are of no direct use to the ants, yet they are not left where they are laid, where they would be exposed to the severity of the weather and to innumerable dangers, but brought into their nests by the ants, and tended by them with the utmost care through the long winter months until the

F1416    Book contribution:     Darwin, C. R. 1882. [Extracts from Darwin's draft chapter 10 of Natural selection]. In Romanes, G. J., Animal intelligence. London: Kegan Paul Trench & Co.   Text   Image   PDF

marked ants, knowing their way, always took the right turn at the angle; but the stranger ants, being guided only by scent, for the most part took the wrong turn at the angle, so going to the empty glass m. For out of 150 stranger ants only 21 went to h, while the remaining 129 went to m. Still the fact that all the stranger ants did not follow the erroneous scent-trail to m, may be taken to indicate that they are also assisted in finding treasure by the sense of sight, though in a lesser degree

F1416    Book contribution:     Darwin, C. R. 1882. [Extracts from Darwin's draft chapter 10 of Natural selection]. In Romanes, G. J., Animal intelligence. London: Kegan Paul Trench & Co.   Text   Image   PDF

young ants are taught to distinguish between friends and foes. When an ants' nest is attacked by foreign ants, the young ones never join in the fight, but confine themselves to removing the pup ; and that the knowledge of hereditary enemies is not wholly instinctive in ants is proved by the following experiment, which we owe to Forel. He put young ants belonging to three different species into a glass case with pup of six other species all the species being naturally hostile to one another. The

F1416    Book contribution:     Darwin, C. R. 1882. [Extracts from Darwin's draft chapter 10 of Natural selection]. In Romanes, G. J., Animal intelligence. London: Kegan Paul Trench & Co.   Text   Image   PDF

workers returning to the nest from the tree on which the milking was going on, a far smaller number had distended abdomens than among those descending the tree itself. A closer investigation showed that at the roots of the trees, at the outlets of the subterranean galleries, a number of ants were assembled, which were fed by the returning ants after the fashion already described in feeding the larv , and which were distinguished by the observer as 'pensioners.' MacCook often observed the same

F1416    Book contribution:     Darwin, C. R. 1882. [Extracts from Darwin's draft chapter 10 of Natural selection]. In Romanes, G. J., Animal intelligence. London: Kegan Paul Trench & Co.   Text   Image   PDF

out the entrances thereinto, leaving on one side for this investigation their only object, the carrying off the pup ; but the sanguine ants under similar circumstances did not allow themselves to be deceived, but at once ransacked the whole heap. On another occasion, while a procession of Amazon ants was on its way to plunder a nest of F. fusca, before it arrived Forel poured out a sack-full of sanguine ants, and made a break in the nest: The sanguine ants pressed in, while the fusca came out to

F1416    Book contribution:     Darwin, C. R. 1882. [Extracts from Darwin's draft chapter 10 of Natural selection]. In Romanes, G. J., Animal intelligence. London: Kegan Paul Trench & Co.   Text   Image   PDF

about, the ants are in great concern to carry every morsel of it under shelter again; and sometimes, when I had dug into a nest, I found the next day all the earth thrown out filled with little pits, that the ants had dug into it to get out the covered-up food. When they migrate from one part to another, they also carry with them all the ant-food from their old habitations. In B chner's 'Geistesleben der Thiere' there is published an interesting description of the habits of these ants, which