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
An ant, whose brain has been perforated by the pointed
mandibles of an amazon, remains as though nailed to
its place; a shudder runs from time to time through
its body, and one of its legs is lifted at regular
intervals. It occasionally makes a short and quick
step, as though driven by an unseen spring, but, like
that of an automaton, aimless and objectless. If it is
pulled, it makes a movement of avoidance, but falls
back into its stupefied condition as soon as it is
released. It is no longer capable of action
consciously directed to a given object; it neither
tries to escape, nor to attack, nor to go back to its
home, nor to rejoin its companions, nor to walk away;
it feels neither heat nor cold, it knows neither fear
nor desire for food. It is merely an automatic and
reflex machine, and is exactly similar to one of those
pigeons from which Flourens removed the hemispheres of
the cerebrum. Just in the same way behaves the body of
an ant from which the head has been taken away. In the
numerous fights between amazons and other ants,
countless cases have been observed of slight injury to
the brain, which have caused the most remarkable
phenomena. Many of the wounded were seized with a mad
rage, and flung themselves at every one that came in
their way, whether friend or foe. Others assumed an
appearance of indifference, and walked serenely about
in the midst of the fighting. Others exhibited a
sudden failure of strength; but they still recognised
their enemies, approached them, and tried to bite them
in cold blood, in a way quite foreign to the behaviour
of healthy ants. They were also often observed to run
round and round in a circle, the motion resembling the
_manège_, or riding-school action of mammals, when one
of the crura cerebri has been removed.
If an ant is cut in half through the thorax, so that
the great nerve ganglia of the pro-thorax remain
untouched, the behaviour of the head shows that
intelligence also remains untouched. Ants mutilated in
this way try to go forwards with their two remaining
legs, and beg with their antennæ for their companions'
aid. If one of these latter lets itself be stopped,
then we observe a lively interchange of thanks and
sympathy expressed by the actively moving antennæ.
Forel placed near to each other two such mutilated
bodies of the _F. rufibarbis_. They conversed with
each other in the above-described way, and appeared
each to beg for help. But when he put in some
similarly mutilated ants of a hostile species, _F.
sanguinea_, the picture was changed; war broke out
between these cripples just in the same way and with
the same fury as between perfect ants.[44]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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