Search Results - The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online

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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

sill for ants coming up from the garden. In consequence of Herr Gredler's communications he took it into his head to put the bait for the ants, pounded sugar, into an old inkstand, and hung this up by a string to the cross-piece of his window, and left it hanging freely. A few ants were in with the bait. These soon found their road out over the string with their grains of sugar, and so their way back to their friends. Before long a procession was arranged on the new road from the window-sill

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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

have been the place, in order to support the earth still to be brought in, to have had recourse to those pillars, buttresses, or fragments of dried leaves, which many ants are wont to use in building. But the use of this expedient is not customary with the ants I was observing (F. fusca). Our ants, however, were sufficient for the occasion. For a moment they seemed inclined to leave their work, but soon turned instead to a grass-plant growing near, the long narrow leaves of which ran close

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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

followed the road, not the direction.' There can be little doubt that ants have a sense of taste, as they are so well able to distinguish sugary substances; and it is unquestionable that in their antenn they possess highly elaborated organs of touch. Fig. 6. Sense of Direction. As evidence of the accuracy and importance of the sense of direction in the Hymenoptera, we must here adduce Sir John Lubbock's highly interesting experiments on ants leaving his experiments in this connection on bees and

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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

and so arranged that the ants in going straight from it to the nest would reach the board at the point b, and after passing under the paper tunnel c, would proceed between five pairs of wooden bricks, each 3 inches in length and 1 inches in height. When they got to know their way they went quite straight along the line d e to a. The board was then twisted as shown in Fig. 4. 'The bricks and tunnel being arranged exactly in the same direction as before, but the board having been moved, the line

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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

of the ants traversing the road made any attempt to release their imprisoned companions. He tried the same experiment with the same result on various other species. Even when the friends in difficulty are actually in sight, it by no means follows that their companions will assist them. Of this, he says, he could give almost any number of instances. Thus, when ants are entangled in honey, their companions devote themselves to the honey, and entirely neglect their friends in distress; and when

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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

into the water, is 'in part to be rid of them, and partly, perhaps, with a view to effecting a possible cure; for I have seen one ant carry another down the twig which formed their path to the surface of the water, and, after dipping it in for a minute, carry it laboriously up again, and lay it in the sun to dry and recover.' But that some species of ants display marked signs of what we may call sympathy even towards healthy companions in distress, is proved by the following observation of Mr

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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

considered; and after she had wandered about for half an hour, I put her to the larv . Now, in this case, the twenty-one ants must have been brought out by my marked one, for they came exactly with her, and there were no other ants out. Moreover, it would seem that they must have been told, because (which is very curious in itself) she did not in either case bring a larva, and E 2 [page] 52 ANIMAL INTELLIGENCE

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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

pup .' Concerning the origin of this remarkable instinct, Mr. Darwin writes: As ants which are not slave-makers will, as I have seen, carry off pup of other species if scattered near their nests, it is possible that such pup originally stored as food might become developed, and the foreign ants thus unintentionally reared would then follow their proper instincts, and do what work they could. If their presence proved useful to the species which had seized them if it were more advantageous to the

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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

into a large vault, the chamber where the dead were placed, together with the passage which led to it, being completely covered in. Habits Peculiar to Certain Species. Leaf-cutting Ants of the Amazon ( codoma cephalotes). The mode of working practised by these ants is thus described by Mr. Bates: They mount a tree in multitudes. Each one places itself on the surface of a leaf, and cuts with its sharp scissor-like jaws a nearly semicircular incision on the upper side; it then takes the edge

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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

, containing the nutlets of calamint, are gathered; two ants also sometimes combine their efforts, when one stations itself near the base of the peduncle and gnaws it at the point of greatest tension, while the other hauls upon and twists it. I have never seen a capsule severed from its stalk by cutting alone, and the mandibles of this ant are perhaps incompetent to perform such a task. I have occasionally seen ants engaged in cutting the capsules of certain plants, drop them, and allow their

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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

, that when some ants in a community have been killed by poison, the survivors avoid the poison: he, however, made no experiments to test this statement. The other main point on which his observations are defective has reference to a remarkable statement made by Lincecum in the most emphatic terms. This statement is that upon the surface of their disk the ants sow the seeds of a certain plant, called ant-rice, for the purpose of subsequently reaping a harvest of the grain. There is no doubt that

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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

of the head. Thus the dust is compressed into a ball which is of sufficient size to justify deportation. The same operation is observed in the side-galleries, where the ants work very frequently upon their sides or backs, precisely as I have seen colliers do in Pennsylvania coal-mines. The following is likewise worth quoting from the same author: Seeds are evidently not the only food of our agriculturals. When the ants at disk No. 2 had broken through the slight mud-sediment that sealed up

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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

pouring in from both sides. Each of these outside columns is a double line, the ants composing one of the two lines all running in the same direction as the main army, and the ants composing the other line all running in the opposite direction. The former are empty-handed carriers, which having deposited their burdens in the rear, are again advancing to the van for fresh burdens. Those composing the other line are all laden with the mangled remains of insects, pup of other ants, c. On either side of

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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

hive is uninhabited, or the bees all dead, the ants will swarm into the hive as long as any honey is to be found there. P. Huber records that a wall which had been partly erected by ants was observed by him As though it were intended to support the still unfinished arched roof of a large room, which was being built from the opposite side. But the workers which had begun the arch had given it too low an elevation for the wall on which it was to rest, and if it had been continued on the same lines

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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

I was also in this way able to see for myself much that I otherwise could not have seen. Thus I was able to watch the operation of removing roots which had pierced through their galleries, belonging to seedling plants growing on the surface, and which was performed by two ants, one pulling at the free end of the root, and the other gnawing at its fibres where the strain was greatest, until at length it gave way. And again, Two ants sometimes combine their efforts, when one stations itself near

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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

is Herr H. Kreplin, of Heidem hl (Station Ducherom), 'who lived for nearly twenty years in South America as an engineer, and had often the opportunity of seeing the driver ants in the forests there.' He writes to B chner, under date May 10, 1876, as follows: On both sides of the train, at about 10 mm. distance from each other, stronger ants are to be seen, distinguishable from the others by their foxy colour and very thick heads with gigantic mandibles. These 'thickheads' play the same r le in

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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

we have already considered: A nest was made near one of our tramways, and to get to the trees the ants had to cross the rails, over which the waggons were continually passing and repassing. Every time they came along a number of ants were crushed to death. They persevered in crossing for some time, but at last set to work and tunnelled underneath each rail. One day, when the waggons were not running, I stopped up the tunnels with stones; but although great numbers carrying leaves were thus cut

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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

instinct of polecat, 347 Allen, J. A., on breeding habits of pinniped seals, 341-6 Alligators, 256-8 and 263 Alopecias vulpes, 252 Am ba, apparent intelligence of, 21 Anemones, sea, 233, 234 Anger, of ants and bees, see under; of fish, 246, 247; of monkeys, 478, 479 and 484-96 Angler-fish, 247, 248 Annelida, apparent intelligence of, 24 Antenn , effects of removal in ants, 142; in bees, 197 Antithesis, principle of, in expression of emotions by monkeys, 494, 495 Ant-lion, 231, 235 Ants, powers

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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

latter tried to recover the stolen seeds both by fighting for them and by stealing seeds in their turn from the nest of their oppressors. The thieves, however, were evidently the stronger, and streams of ants laden with seeds arrived safely at the upper nest, while close observation showed that very few seeds were successfully carried on the reverse journey into the lower and plundered nest. Thus when I fixed my attention on one of these robbed ants surreptitiously making its exit with the seed

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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

the larv at A. When the ants had made a number of journeys over C D A and back again, he raised the block C D so that there was an interval 3/10 of an inch between the end of the block D and the larv at A. The ants kept on coming, and tried hard to reach down from D to A, which was only just out of their reach . After a while they all gave up their efforts and went away, losing their prize in spite of most earnest efforts, because it did not occur to them to drop 3/10 of an inch. At the moment