4 ANTS. 



easier for a terrestrial than an aerial animal. When it is necessary to 

 build, the latter must, like the bee, either secrete the substance of its 

 nest or seek it at a distance, as does the bee when she collects propolis, 

 or the wasp when she gathers material for her paper. The terrestrial 

 animal has its building materials close at hand, and its architecture may 

 be as varied as these materials. Ants, therefore, probably owe their 

 social and industrial superiority to their habitat.'' 



The dominance of ants is clearly indicated by the small number of 

 their enemies. They are preyed upon by comparatively few mammals, 

 birds, reptiles, parasitic insects and other ants. 1 And however much 

 their philoprogenitive instincts may be exploited by their various guests 

 and mess-mates, the adult ants enjoy, in temperate regions at least, a 

 singular immunity. A further indication of dominance is seen in the 

 peculiar and widely distributed defensive modifications of the integu- 

 ment of those animals which are most frequently exposed to the attack 

 of ant colonies. The scales of reptiles, the feathers of birds and the 

 hairs of mammals and caterpillars suggest themselves as such defensive 

 adaptations. At any rate it would be difficult to conceive of structures 

 better suited to the protection of arboreal and terrestrial animals against 

 these ubiquitous insects. 



Some very striking resemblances between human and ant societies 

 are implied in the fact already mentioned, that animal communities, in 

 order to deserve the name of societies, must have certain fundamental 

 traits in common. Indeed, the resemblances between men and ants are 

 so very conspicuous that they were noted even by aboriginal thinkers. 

 Folk-lore and primitive poetry and philosophy show the ants as an 

 abiding source of similes expressing the fervid activity and cooperation 

 of men. Although these similes have become trite from repetition, 

 the scientific student can hardly free himself from the many anthropo- 

 morphisms which they suggest. He is forced to admit that the social 

 and psychical ascendancy of the ants among invertebrates and of the 

 mammals among vertebrates, constitutes a very striking example of 

 convergent development. And the paleontologist may be inclined to 

 admit that this convergence has a deeper significance, that it may have 

 been due, in fact, since ants and mammals seem to make their appear- 

 ance simultaneously in Mesozoic times, to some peculiar transitory 

 conditions that favored the birth of forms destined to dominance 

 through extraordinary psychical endowment. What these conditions 

 were we have but the slenderest hope of ever knowing. Perhaps they 

 may be conceived as having favored psychical mutations, which are 



1 As Forel says : " The ants' most dangerous enemies are other ants, just as 

 man's most dangerous enemies are other men." 



