Now, in the dog or the horse sight and smell are equally developed; so
that they probably think of most things about equally in terms of each.
In ourselves, sight is highly developed, and smell is a mere relic; so
that we think of most things in terms of sight alone, and only rarely,
as with a rose or a lily, in terms of both. But in ants, on the
contrary, smell is highly developed and sight a mere relic; so that
they probably think of most things as smellable only, and very little
as visible in form or colour. Dr. Bastian has shown that bees and
butterflies are largely guided by scent; and though he is certainly
wrong in supposing that sight has little to do with leading them to
flowers (for if you cut off the bright-coloured corolla they will never
discover the mutilated blossoms, even when they visit others on the
same plant), yet the mere fact that so many flowers are scented is by
itself enough to show that perfume has a great deal to do with the
matter. In wingless ants, while the eyes have undergone degeneration,
this high sense of smell has been continued and further developed, till
it has become their principal sense-endowment, and the chief raw
material of their intelligence. Their active little brains are almost
wholly engaged in correlating and co-ordinating smells with actions.
Their olfactory nerves give them nearly all the information they can
gain about the external world, and their brains take in this
information and work out the proper movements which it indicates. By
smell they find their way about and carry on the business of their
lives. Just as you and I know the road from Regent's Circus to Pall
Mall by visible signs of the street-corners and the Duke of York's
Column, so these little ants know the way from the nest to the corpse
of the dismembered worm by observing and remembering the smells which
they met with on their way. See: I obliterate the track for an inch or
two with my stick, and the little creatures go beside themselves with
astonishment and dismay. They rush about wildly, inquiring of one
another with their antennæ whether this is really Doomsday, and whether
the whole course of nature has been suddenly revolutionised. Then,
after a short consultation, they determine upon action; and every ant
starts off in a different direction to hunt the lost track, head to the
ground, exactly as a pointer hunts the missing trail of a bird or hare.
Each ventures an inch or so off, and then runs back to find the rest,
for fear he should get isolated altogether. At last, after many
failures, one lucky fellow hits upon the well-remembered train of
scents, and rushes back leaving smell-tracks no doubt upon the soil
behind him. The message goes quickly round from post to post, each
sentry making passes with his antennæ to the next picket, and so
sending on the news to the main body in the rear. Within five minutes
communications are re-established, and the precious bit of worm-meat
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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