168 The Ottawa Naturalist. [Dec. 



TENT-BUILDING HABITS OF ANTS. 



By C. Gordon Hewitt, D.Sc. 

 (Dominion Entomologist, Ottawa). 



The short and interesting article in the November number 

 of The Ottawa Naturalist on "Ant Roads," by Mr. Charles 

 Macnamara, induced me to believe that an account of some 

 further habits of ants might be of interest, and this is my 

 apology for giving a resume of some observations which my 

 friend. Dr. Marie Stopes made during a recent sojourn in Japan, 

 and an account of which she published with my collaboration 

 in the "Memoirs of the Manchester Library and Philosophical 

 Society,'' Vol. Si, {Memoir No. 20, 1909), under the title "On 

 the Tent-building Habits of the Ant, Lasius niger, Linn., in 

 Japan." 



La-nus niger is the common brown or black garden ant and 

 has a world-wide distribution. It usually constructs under- 

 ground galleries and passages, and frequently keeps or cultivates 

 aphides for the sake of the "honey-dew" which is an excretory 

 product of the alimentary canal and is much sought after by the 

 ants for food. It is not, as is frequently supposed, secreted by 

 the small horn-like posterior appendages of the ants known as 

 the svphons. The ants, as it has been stated, sometimes take 

 the aphid eggs into their nests to protect them from the frost. 

 L. niger, to mv mind, is rather like man in the development 

 of its agricultural methods. In some regions they are in these 

 respects less advanced than in other places. Some are mere 

 savages and leave their "cows," the aphides, out in the open to 

 take care of themselves, others take great pains to keep their 

 live-stock under such conditions as to be free from all danger 

 and to ensure a maximum amount of "honey dew" production 

 they are the up-to-date farmers, so to speak. I do not intend to 

 enter the arena of the vexed question of whether these actions are 

 due to intelligence or instinct on the part of the ants : that is not 

 my object. I am simply giving facts; let those who will analyse 

 the motive power of these activities. 



So that we find that whereas certain ants are content to 

 wander along their well-worn paths to the pasture fields where 

 their aphid stock is herded, others more advanced in their 

 agricultural development make shelters or "tents," as they 

 have been called, for their insect herds; we have called them 

 "cow-sheds." 



As early as 1810 Huber described these structures which 

 L. niger w^as accustomed to make. He found small spherical 



