COMMUNICATION AMONG INSECTS 



By N. E. MclNDOO, Ph. D. 



Senior Enlomolor/ist, Deciduous-Fruit Insect Investigations, Bureau of En- 



tomology, United States Department of Agriculture 



[With one plate] 

 INTRODUCTION 



Comnmnication among people implies some form of language. 

 Regardless of whether it is an oral, a written, a sign, or a touch lan- 

 guage, our definition of the word language is so well fixed in our 

 minds that it can not be correctly used for any animal other than 

 the human species. Nevertheless, the word, broadly speaking, means 

 any form of communication and should not be confined solely to 

 people. For fear of criticism recent writers on insect psychology 

 have hardly dared to use the word language in connection with in- 

 sect communication. However, in the writer's mind, communication 

 among insects, particularly among the social ones, is better devel- 

 oped, and perhaps developed on a higher scale, than is communica- 

 tion among the most primitive tribes of people. Of course, these 

 tribes are able to convey ideas by speech, gestures, signs, and to a 

 limited degree by written characters ; nevertheless, when we consider 

 the minutest details of communication, the extremely acute senses of 

 smell and touch in insects certainly surpass the crude and undeveloped 

 means of these tribes of people. Then why do we confine the word 

 language to people only ? Merely because usage among ourselves has 

 decreed this order, and we fail to consider that animals also must 

 comnuinicate, not only among their own species but more or less with 

 other animals. 



One of the unanswered questions concerning the lives of insects 

 has been, how do they know one another, and how do they com- 

 municate information when once they have gained it ? We are begin- 

 ning to receive light on this subject, but have much yet to learn 

 before we know all the details of the means which enable insects 

 to live in communities. Ever since ancient times people have won- 

 dered how ants and bees, in particular, recognize their companions. 

 Since it was not reasonable to suppose that each insect in a large 

 community could recognize by sight every other individual in it, the 



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