The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection: Or, the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, 6th EditionDarwin, Charles
History
The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection: Or, the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, 6th Edition
Darwin, Charles
Evolution (Biology); Natural selection
behave differently when more numerous; but Mr. Smith informs me that he
has watched the nests at various hours during May, June and August,
both in Surrey and Hampshire, and has never seen the slaves, though
present in large numbers in August, either leave or enter the nest.
Hence, he considers them as strictly household slaves. The masters, on
the other hand, may be constantly seen bringing in materials for the
nest, and food of all kinds. During the year 1860, however, in the
month of July, I came across a community with an unusually large stock
of slaves, and I observed a few slaves mingled with their masters
leaving the nest, and marching along the same road to a tall Scotch-fir
tree, twenty-five yards distant, which they ascended together, probably
in search of aphides or cocci. According to Huber, who had ample
opportunities for observation, the slaves in Switzerland habitually
work with their masters in making the nest, and they alone open and
close the doors in the morning and evening; and, as Huber expressly
states, their principal office is to search for aphides. This
difference in the usual habits of the masters and slaves in the two
countries, probably depends merely on the slaves being captured in
greater numbers in Switzerland than in England.
One day I fortunately witnessed a migration of F. sanguinea from one
nest to another, and it was a most interesting spectacle to behold the
masters carefully carrying their slaves in their jaws instead of being
carried by them, as in the case of F. rufescens. Another day my
attention was struck by about a score of the slave-makers haunting the
same spot, and evidently not in search of food; they approached and
were vigorously repulsed by an independent community of the slave
species (F. fusca); sometimes as many as three of these ants clinging
to the legs of the slave-making F. sanguinea. The latter ruthlessly
killed their small opponents and carried their dead bodies as food to
their nest, twenty-nine yards distant; but they were prevented from
getting any pupæ to rear as slaves. I then dug up a small parcel of the
pupæ of F. fusca from another nest, and put them down on a bare spot
near the place of combat; they were eagerly seized and carried off by
the tyrants, who perhaps fancied that, after all, they had been
victorious in their late combat.
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