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Ants — Part 5

The life of an ant community is practically perpetual, thus differing greatly from the community life of wasps and bumblebees. The nests vary greatly in form. Some ants occupy galleries and chambers in the ground. Others make extensive galleries and chambers in decaying wood. Others build mounds. Still others construct nests of a paste-like substance, and in tropical regions there are extraordinary variations in the manner in which nests are built and in the material which composes the nests. The ants themselves feed upon a great variety of substances. Under natural conditions they are both carnivorous and vegetable feeders, eating various plant substances, fruit, and other insects, as well as the dead bodies of higher animals. They are especially fond of the sweet sap of certain trees, and of the secretions of plant lice, of scale insects, and of certain leaf hoppers and tree hoppers. In an old community the number of ants may be very great, extending high into the hundreds of thousands, and it is a matter of common observation that while the ants of one community are perfectly able to recognize other members of the same community, no matter how great their number, they also recognize at once and either resent or have nothing to do with members of other communities, even of the same species.

The battles of ants, the slave-making habits of certain species, the extraordinary variety of the guest insects which are found in ants' nests and their diverse functions in the community, the relations of ants with plant lice and other insects which afford them one of their articles of diet, have so often been described in other works that it would be a vain repetition to dilate upon them here. The strange facts connected with their agricultural pursuits, with the occupation of mushroom-growing which is cultivated by certain species, the remarkable features of the lives of the honey ants and, in fact, everything connected with ant economy offers most fascinating reading, even to persons not especially interested in nature.

The honey ants deserve more than passing mention, even though they are found in this country only in the far West and at high elevations. The peculiarity of these creatures is that one form has the abdomen distended the size of a currant and entirely filled with grape sugar, or "honey." The nest is a low, gravel-covered mound about six inches in diameter and two or three inches high. The honey-bearers are found clinging to the roofs of the chambers, a few inches under the ground, and seem to act simply as cells for the storing of the sweet substance which is collected by the active workers from the exudations of a gall which is found upon a dwarf oak. In times of famine and in seasons when the exudation is not forthcoming the honey-bearer regurgitates the honey, drop by drop, and it is transferred to the stomachs of the individuals in waiting. In other respects the economy of the colony does not differ materially from other species. There is practically with this insect a new caste of workers which probably are not gradually transformed by the distension of the crop and the expansion of the abdomen, but which have some peculiar structure or form of the intestine and abdominal walls which gives them a tendency to this change. They become simply animated pantries for the use of the others in time of want. Dr. H. C. McCook has written a charming book upon this subject, which is entitled, "The Honey Ants and the Occident Ants," and the same distinguished entomologist and divine has written another book, entitled, "The Agricultural Ant of Texas," which gives a most interesting account of the most interesting ants found in this country, and which includes at the same time many observations, scattered here and there throughout the volume, on other ants to be found in the United States.

A word may well be said of the household ants. The little red ant (Monomorium pharaonis) has become thoroughly domesticated, passing its entire existence in houses and having its nests in the walls or beneath the flooring. The little black ant, (Monomorium minutum), and the pavement ant of the Eastern States (Tetramorium coespitum) are also frequently found in houses. They are not so destructive to household effects as they are annoying through their presence on articles of food. A friend once told me a beautiful story of how he once bought a piece of blackberry pie one night, in a dimly lighted railroad eating house in a western town. He began to eat it and discovered an acid flavor which he did not expect, and, carrying it to the light, found it swarming with Monomorium pharaonis. This is not an uncommon experience and simply indicates the countless numbers in which these little creatures occur sometimes in houses. How to get rid of these ants is a difficult and serious question. Their nests, occurring usually in walls, are hard to locate. Trapping them with sweetened sponges afterwards soaked in hot water is apparently sometimes almost hopeless on account of their infinite number. Careful watching, however, will usually show the crack through which most of them enter the pantry or the dining room, and then squirting in kerosene with a large syringe through this crack will often stop the incursions; or, the crack may be packed with cotton soaked in kerosene, driving it in with a table knife.