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Ants — Part 3

No one who has read Bethe's account of how ants find their way by ant-traveled paths and how easily they are lost when but a very short distance from the path, can help thinking of Mark Twain's inimitable "chapter in natural history" which also wakes a responsive chord in the mind of every one who has attempted to see intelligence and design in the movements of the isolated ant. "During many summers, now, I have watched him," says Twain, "when I ought to have been in better business, and I have not yet come across a living ant that seemed to have any more sense than a dead one.#I admit his industry, of course; he is the hardest working creature in the world,--when anybody is looking,--but his leatherheadedness is the point I make against him. He goes out foraging, he makes a capture, and then what does he do? Go home? No,--he goes anywhere but home. He doesn't know where home is. His home may be only three feet away,--no matter, he can't find it. He makes his capture, as I have said; it is generally something which can be of no sort of use to himself or anybody else; it is usually seven times bigger than it ought to be; he hunts out the awkwardest place to take hold of it; he lifts it bodily up into the air by main force, and starts; not toward home, but in the opposite direction; not calmly and wisely, but with a frantic haste which is wasteful of his strength; he fetches up against a pebble, and instead of going around it, he climbs over it backwards dragging his booty after him, tumbles down on the other side, jumps up in a passion, kicks the dust off his clothes, moistens his hands, grabs his property viciously, yanks it this way, then that, shoves it ahead of him a moment, turns tail and lugs it after him a moment, gets madder, then presently hoists it into the air and goes tearing away in an entirely new direction; comes to a weed; it never occurs to him to go around it, he must climb it; and he does climb it, dragging his worthless property to the top--which is as bright a thing to do as it would be for me to carry a sack of flour from Heidelburg to Paris by way of Strasburg steeple; when he gets up there he finds that is not the place; takes a cursory glance at the scenery and either climbs down again or tumbles down, and starts off once more--as usual in a new direction. At the end of half an hour he fetches up within six inches of the place he started from and lays his burden down***." After continuing this charmingly aimless work for some time and meeting another ant and fighting him about nothing, "each starts off in a different direction to see if he can't find an old nail or something else that is heavy enough to afford entertainment and at the same time valueless enough to make an ant want to own it".

Wasmann has just published some important observations in which he shows that ants of the genus Lasius appear to determine direction only by paths previously traveled by members of the same community and which they distinguish by the sense of smell located in the antennae, but that certain ants of the genus Formica proceed directly to the desired point without following paths, using apparently sight as the directing influence. Some little understood sense of orientation, however, may lead to this result and such a sense of course would be instinctive.

The community life of ants seems almost perfect. It has been likened to a perfect republic where each works for the good of the whole community, each having his appointed work, laboring constantly for the good of all, and each ready to sacrifice himself for the good of all. Most of the writings on the habits of ants deal with European species. Little is known of an exact nature about the full details of the life history of any one species which inhabits the northern half of the United States. Random notes and occasional observations have been published, but a thorough, conscientious study of all of the aspects of the life of one of our commoner forms is still to be made. Even the little red ant of households (Monomorium pharaonis), or the pavement ant (Tetramorium coespitum), or the common black carpenter ant (Camponotus pennsylvanicus), or any of the common species of Lasius or Formica, afford subjects for investigation which may everywhere be found and which should be studied through one or two years by some careful observer willing to record all that he sees.