Animal Intelligence: The International Scientific Series, Vol. XLIV.Romanes, George John
Science
Animal Intelligence: The International Scientific Series, Vol. XLIV.
Romanes, George John
Animal behavior; Animal intelligence
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 their
gate, as described above, they exhibited a peculiar
behaviour. Instead of heading for the roads and
pressing along them, they distributed themselves at
once over the entire disk, radiating from the gate to
all points in the circumference, from which they
penetrated the jungle of grass beyond. In a moment a
large number were returning across the roads, out of
the grass, over the pavement toward the entrance. They
bore in their mandibles objects which I presently
found to be the males and females of white ants
(_Termes flavipes_), which were filling the air,
during and after the rain, in marriage flight. They
had probably swarmed just before the shower. The
agriculturals were under great excitement, and hurried
forth and back at the top of their speed. The number
of ants bearing termites was soon so great that the
vestibule became choked, and a mass of struggling
anthood was piled up around the gate. A stream of
eager insects continually poured out of the door,
pushing their way through the crowd that vainly but
persistently endeavoured to get in with their burdens.
The outcoming ants had the advantage, and succeeded in
jostling through the quivering rosette of antennæ,
legs, heads, and abdomens. Occasionally a worker
gained an entrance by dint of sheer physical force and
perseverance. Again and again would the crowd rush
from all sides upon the gate, only to be pushed back
by the issuing throng. In the meanwhile quite a heap
of termites, a good handful at least, had been
accumulated at one side of the gate, the ants having
evidently dropped them, in despair of entrance, and
hurried off to garner more.
In due time the pressure upon the vestibule
diminished, the laden workers entered more freely, and
in the end this heap was transferred to the interior.
The rapidity with which the ants were distributed to
all parts of their roads, after the first opening of
the gates, was truly surprising. I was greatly
puzzled, at the first, to know what the cause of such
a rush might be. The whole behaviour was such as to
carry the conviction that they knew accurately what
effect the rain would have, had calculated upon it,
and were acting in accordance with previous
experience. I had no doubt at the time, and have none
now, that the capturing of insects beaten down by the
rain is one of the well-established customs of these
ants. I saw a few other insects taken in, and one
milliped, but chiefly the white ants.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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