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
I have noticed in one of my formicaria a subterranean
cemetery, where I have seen some ants burying their
dead by placing earth above them. One ant was
evidently much affected, and tried to exhume the
bodies, but the united exertions of the yellow sextons
were more than sufficient to neutralise the effort of
the disconsolate mourner. The cemetery was now
converted into a large vault, the chamber where the
dead were placed, together with the passage which led
to it, being completely covered in.
_Habits Peculiar to Certain Species._
_Leaf-cutting Ants of the Amazon_ ([OE]codoma cephalotes).--The mode of
working practised by these ants is thus described by Mr. Bates:--
They mount a tree in multitudes. . . . Each one places
itself on the surface of a leaf, and cuts with its
sharp scissor-like jaws a nearly semicircular incision
on the upper side; it then takes the edge between its
jaws, and by a sharp jerk detaches the piece.
Sometimes they let the leaf drop to the ground, where
a little heap accumulates, until carried off by
another relay of workers; but generally each marches
off with the piece it has operated on, and as all take
the same road to the colony, the path they follow
becomes in a short time smooth and bare, looking like
the impression of a cart-wheel through the herbage.
Each ant carries its semicircular piece of leaf upright over its head,
so that the home-returning train is rendered very conspicuous. Nearer
observation shows that this home-returning or ladened train of workers
keeps to one side of the road, while the outgoing or empty-handed train
keeps to the other side; so that on every road there is a double train
of ants going in opposite directions. When the leaves arrive at the nest
they are received by a smaller kind of workers, whose duty it is to cut
up the pieces of leaf into still smaller fragments, whereby the leaves
seem to be better fitted for the purpose to which, as we shall presently
see, they are put. These smaller workers never take any part in the
outdoor labours; but they occasionally leave the nest, apparently for
the sole purpose of obtaining air and exercise, for when they leave the
nest they merely run about doing nothing, and frequently, as if in mere
sport, mount some of the semicircular pieces of leaf which the carrier
ants are taking to the nest, and so get a ride home.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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