A NATURALIST IN BRAZIL 



and regurgitates into its throat a little food from her "social crop." 

 When the ant has satisfied her guest she considers herself well 

 rewarded for her trouble : she draws a bunch of the beetle's yellow 

 hairs through her mouth, delighting in the sweet exudation. 



This juice is the alcohol of the ant community, and as a result 

 of drinking it the ants become more and more addicted to it, neglect 

 their duties to their own brood, and feed only the beetles and 

 their insatiable larvae; and the latter repay their hosts but ill, for 

 there are species among them which devour the eggs and larvae of 

 the ants. 



The reader will now ask how it is possible to ascertain that the 

 exudations of the beetles intoxicate the ants. Wasmann has answered 

 this question by some very fascinating experiments. He kept the ants 

 and beetles in artificial nests, under glass, and he always observed 

 that the ants, if their nest (which was usually covered) was suddenly 

 exposed to the light, immediately raised their bodies in the posture 

 of defence, and opened their mandibles. But such of the ants as were 

 sucking the hairs of the beetles could not be diverted from their 

 pleasant occupation. In the case of the large Carabid which I found 

 in a Sauvas' nest, it seemed to me that I could taste, with the tip 

 of my tongue, the sweetness of the secretion exuded from the hairs. 

 In the interest of science I would willingly have undertaken to test 

 in my own person the intoxicating effect of the juice, but I should 

 have needed more beetles than were ever at my disposal ! 



Still other guests have been found among the Leafcutting Ants, 

 of which to-day perhaps a hundred species are known. There are 

 small cockroaches, which climb on to the backs of the Sauvas and 

 lick them, the ants quietly permitting them to do so. The ants are 

 less contented with certain other beetles, of which we do not yet 

 know whether, in unguarded moments, they do not fall upon the 

 ants or their brood. According to Wasmann such treachery is very 

 probable, since the soldiers often attack them, angrily but in- 

 effectually, since their mandibles glide off the flattened scutum, 

 and cannot grasp the head, which is always held down out of reach. 

 Such "defensive" forms of Coleoptera are not unknown among 

 other species of ant. As a rule, indeed, they escape the attention of 

 the ants, for the beetles living in the dark fungus-chambers resemble 

 their hosts in outward shape and distribution of hair, while other 

 forms, which lurk by the entrances, where the light falls on them, 

 have even assumed the coloration of the Sauvas ; in short, they have 

 resorted to mimicry. These last beetles have been seen to hurry to 

 308 



