Abstract
THIS is a continuation of my previous papers on the same subject. In them I recorded various experiments tending to show that in many cases Ants and Bees which have found a store of food or of larvæ certainly do not communicate the information to their friends. This unexpected observation was received with so much surprise, and indeed was so unexpected to myself, that I determined to repeat the experiments: which I have now done, with, however, the same result. To take one as an illustration: I placed an F. Flava (the small red ant) to a heap of larvæ, which, as is well known, are fleshy legless grubs incapable of motion. I placed them about two feet from the entrance to her nest. I then watched her from eleven in the morning till after seven in the evening, during which time she made eighty-six journeys fiom the nest to the heap of larvæ, carrying one off each time; but although she had so much work to do, and though 1he precious larvæ were lying for so long exposed to so many dangers and to the weather, she brought no other ant to assist her in carrying the m off. One of the ants I observed in this way carried off one by one no less than 187 larvæ in a day. In other instances, on the contrary, the opposite result occurred. I was for some time uncertain, in the latter cases, whether the ants purposely brought friends to their assistance, or whether, as the ants are sociable insects, it merely happened that the one accompanied the other, as it were, by accident. To test this question, I took two ants, and placed them under similar circumstances, the one to a heap of larvæ, the other to a group of two or three, always, however, putting one in place of any that was carried off; and it was quite clear that the arts which were placed to the large group of larvæ brought far more friends to their assistance than those which had apparently only two or three larvæ to move. Of thirty ants which were observed, those placed to a large number of larvæ brought 250 friends, while those placed to two or three larvæ under similar circumstances only brought eighty.
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Observations on Bees, Wasps, and Ants * . Nature 13, 37–38 (1875). https://doi.org/10.1038/013037a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/013037a0