insect Study 



425 



THE ANT-NEST, AND WHAT MAY BE SEEN WITHIN IT 



Teacher's Story 



anatomy becomes a very interesting study when we 

 note the vigorous way the ant uses it even to the 

 least part. The slender waist characterizes the ant as 

 well as the wasp; the three regions of the body are 

 easiry seen, the head with its ever moving antennae, the 

 slender thorax with its three pairs of most efficient legs, 

 and the long abdomen. The ant's legs are fairly long 

 as compared with the size of the body and the ant can 

 run with a rapidity that, comparatively, would soon 

 outdistance any Marathon runner, however famed. 1 

 timed an ant one day when she was taking a constitu- 

 tional on my foot rule. She was in no hurry, and yet she made time that 

 if translated into human terms would mean 16 yards per second. In addi- 

 tion to running, many ants when frightened will make leaps with incred- 

 ible swiftness. 



The ant does not show her cleverness in her physiognomy, probably 

 because her eyes seem small and dull and she has a decidedly "retreating 

 forehead;" but the brain behind this unpromising appearance is far more 

 active and efficient than that behind the gorgeous great eyes of the 

 dragon-fly or behind the "high brow" of the grasshopper. 

 The ant's jaws are very large compared with her head ; they 

 work sidewise like a pair of shears and are armed with 

 triangular teeth along the biting edges ; these are not teeth 

 in a vertebrate sense, but are like the teeth of a saw. These 

 jaws are the ant's chief utensils and weapons; with them 

 she seizes the burdens of food which she carries home ; with 

 them she gently lifts her infant charges; with them she 

 crushes and breaks up hard food; with them she carries out soil from her 

 tunnel, and with them she fights her enemies. She also has a pair of long 

 palpi, or feelers. 



Although her eyes are so small and furnished with coarse facets, as 

 compared with other insects, this fact need not count against her, for she 

 has little need of eyes. Her home life is passed in dark burrows where her 

 antennae give her information of her surroundings. Note how these 

 antennas are always moving, seeming to be atremble in eagerness to 

 receive sensations. But aside from their powers of telling things by the 

 touch, wherein they are more delicate than the fingers of the blind, they 

 have other sense organs which are comparable to our sense of smell. 

 Miss Fielde has shown that the five end segments of the antennae have 

 each its own powers in detecting odor. The end segment detects the odor 

 of the ant's own nest and enables her to distinguish this from other nests. 

 The next, or eleventh segment, detects the odor of any descendant of the 

 same queen; by this, she recognizes her sisters wherever she finds them. 

 Through the next, or tenth segment, she recognizes the odor of her own 

 feet on the trail, and thus can retrace her own steps. The eighth and 

 ninth segments convey to her the intelligence and means of caring for 

 the young. If an ant is deprived of these five end-joints of the antennas, 

 she loses all power as a social ant and becomes completely disenfranchised. 

 Miss Fielde gives her most interesting experiments in detail in the Pro- 



A common 

 ant. 



