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 interesting fact in the funereal habits of _Formica
sanguinea_ was related to me by this lady. A visit was
paid to a large colony of these slave-makers, which is
established on the grounds adjoining her residence at
Vineland, New Jersey. I noticed that a number of
carcasses of one of the slave species, _Formica
fusca_, were deposited together quite near the gates
of the nest. These were probably chiefly the dry
bodies of ants brought in from recent raids. It was
noticed that the dead ants were all of one species,
and thereupon Mrs. Treat informed me that the red
slave-makers never deposited their dead with those of
their black servitors, but always laid them by
themselves, not in groups, but separately, and were
careful to take them a considerable distance from the
nest. One can hardly resist pointing here another
likeness between the customs of these social
hymenopters and those of human beings, certain of whom
carry their distinctions of race, condition, or
religious caste, even to the gates of the cemetery in
which the poor body moulders into its mother dust!
It will be observed that none of these accounts furnish evidence of ants
burying their dead, as Pliny asserts to have been the case with ants in
the south of Europe. In the Proceedings of the Linnæan Society, however
(1861), there is a very definite account of such a practice as obtaining
among the ants of Sydney; and although it is from the pen of an observer
not well known, the observation seems to have been one about which there
could scarcely have been a mistake. The observer was Mrs. Hutton, and
this is her account. Having killed a number of 'soldier ants,' and
returning half an hour afterwards to the place where the dead bodies
were lying, she says:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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