TENACITY OF LIFE IN ANTS. 



ADELE M. F1ELDE. 



MAIMED ANTS. 



s 



Remarkable tenacity of life is sometimes exhibited by ants 

 lacking a portion of the body. 



A queen, Stcna innia fuk m m piccuin, deprived of the funicles of 

 her antennae, lived fourteen months in one of my artificial nests, 

 where she laid eggs, sought her own food, and received kindly 

 treatment from the resident workers and several unmutilated 

 queens. 



The head of a Formica fusca subscricca worker under my 

 observation, continued to move its antennae seven hours after 

 decapitation. 



Ants lacking a leg or two may live several weeks. A Stcn- 

 annna fukntin worker, deprived of its mesothoracic pair of legs, 

 was returned by me to an artificial nest where were hundreds of 

 its former comrades and it safely lived there a month or more, 

 disproving any general assertion that ants destroy maimed 

 members of their colony. 



Worker ants deprived of the abdomen sometimes run with 

 great speed, continue to care for the young in the nest, fight with 

 aliens of their own or other species, and they may for some days 

 behave as if unconscious of loss. A Stcncunma fiil-cnui queen 

 deprived of her abdomen lived thereafter for fourteen days in one 

 of my artificial nests, and was seen to eat. A Formica subsericea 

 worker lived without her abdomen for five days. 



M. Charles Janet mentions : an ant that lived nineteen days 

 after decapitation. In experiments made by me, headless ants 

 have continued to walk about for many days. In all these expe- 

 riments aseptic surgery was attempted, the instruments used being 

 carefully sterilized. The Petri cells in which the maimed ants were 



1 "Extraif des Compte rendits hebdomadaires des Seance de /' Academic des Sciences," 

 Paris, II juillet, 1898, p. 130. 



300 



