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What I Saw in an Ant's Nest: Sanguineas

Mr. Darwin gives an interesting account of the different attitudes exhibited by the Sanguineas toward species of ants other than the black race from which their slaves are usually drawn. A few pupe of the yellow ant (F. flava), a courageous and pugnacious little species, were placed within the reach of the slavemaking Sanguineas. A like chance presented with the pupe of their slave race was eagerly seized, and the chrysalides carried off. The pupæ of the yellow ants, however, were not merely left untouched, but the slavemakers exhibited every system of terror and alarm at the sight of the chrysalides of their yellow neighbors. Such an instance demonstrates the existence not merely of perception but also of the memory of past experience, probably of not over agreeable kind, of encounters What I Saw in an Ant's Nest with the yellow ants. When, on the contrary, a nest of the slaves is attacked, the Sanguineas are both bold and wary. Mr. Darwin traced a long file of Sanguineas for forty yards backward to a clump of heath, whence he perceived the last of the invaders marching homeward with a slave pupa in its mouth. Two or three individuals of the attacked and desolate nest were rushing about in wild despair, and "one," adds Mr.

Darwin, "was perched motionless, with its own pupa in its mouth, on the top of a spray of heath, an image of despair over its ravaged home." The picture thus drawn is not the less eloquent because its subject is drawn from lower existence; although the pains and sorrows of ant life may not legitimately be judged by the standard of human woe.

The explanation of the slave-making instinct in ants begins with the recognition of the fact that many ants, not slave-makers, store up pupe of other species for food. If we suppose that some of the pupæ, originally acquired through a cannibal-like instinct, came to maturity within the nest of their captors, and in virtue of their own inherited instincts engaged in the work of the hive, we may conceive of a rational beginning of the slave-making instinct. If, further, the captors learned to appreciate the labors of their captives, as lightening their own work, the habit of collecting pupæ as slaves might succeed and supersede that of collecting them for food. In any case, we should require to postulate on the part of the slave-makers a degree of instinct altogether unusual in insects, or, indeed, in higher animals; but that such instinct is developed in ants other than slave-makers admits of no dispute.

The strengthening, through repetition, of a habit useful to the species may thus be credited with the beginning of the practice of slavery amongst ants; whilst special circumstances such as the number of the slaves as compared with the number of masters - would tend to develop a greater or less degree of dependence of the captors or their servitors. ---- Huber, for instance, informs us that the Fusca-slaves of the Sanguineas of Switzerland work with their masters in building the nest; they close and open the doors of the hive; but their chief office appears to be that of hunting for plant-lice. In England, on the contrary, the slaves are strictly household servants, rarely venturing out of doors. Such differences depend most probably on the fact that a greater number of slaves occur in Swiss than in English nests, and they may therefore be employed in a wider range of duties on the Continent than at home. A fewer number of slaves, a greater aptitude on the part of the slaves for their duties, the inability of the masters to perform the duties of the slaves each or all of these causes combined would serve to increase the value of the servitors, and at the same time to reduce the independence of the masters. -- This increase of the value of the slaves as active factors in the ant community might at length proceed to such extremes as we see exemplified in the Polyergus, already referred to - a race which has become literally unable to feed itself, and to discharge the simplest duties of ant existence, and whose actual life is entirely spent in marauding expeditions on the nests of its neighbors.

What I Saw in an Ant's Nest 223 The subject of the general intelligence of ants, and of their ability to adapt themselves to awkward and unusual circumstances, may be briefly touched upon by way of conclusion.

Between the reason and intelligence of higher animals and the "instinct" of ants there is unquestionably a great gulf fixed. I make this statement unhesitatingly, notwithstanding that I should no more willingly attempt to define "instinct" than to give an exact definition of "insanity." In the latter case one may make the definition so limited as practically to exclude all save one class of cases, or so wide as to include even the judge on the bench. In the case of instinct, the rigid definition of one authority might cause us to regard it as the exclusive property of lower forms and as having no relationship whatever with the mental powers of higher beings; or, on the other hand, as being but a modified form of, or in some respects identical with, these very powers. We know too little respecting the so-called "automatic" powers and ways, even of higher animals, to dogmatize regarding the acts of lower animals, but we may safely assume that one apparent ground or distinction between instinct and reason may be found in the common incompetence of instinct to move out of the beaten track of existence, and in the adaptation of reason, through the teachings of experience, to new and unwonted circumstances.