ANIMAL SOCIETIES — SNODGRASS 433 



The ant queen is not as autocratic as the honey bee queen. She will 

 tolerate her own mature daughters in the nest, and fertilized daughters 

 sometimes return to their home nest and mcrease its population. A 

 queen is said to live normally for 12 to 17 years; though she is ferti- 

 lized but once, she continues egg laying until her death. The males 

 die soon after mating ; the father of a colony never sees his children. 

 The life of a worker is usually about 3 or 4 years, but some are recorded 

 as living for 6 years. The ants do not construct cells for the brood as 

 do the social wasps and bees. The larvae are kept on the floor of an 

 open chamber of the nest, from which they can readily be removed in 

 case of danger, as, for example, should the nest be invaded by raiders, 

 or disrupted by man or some other anunal. 



Ants in general are omnivorous, feeding on both animal and vege- 

 table food. Some collect seeds and st-ore them in the nest, others are 

 true agriculturists. Members of the latter may often be seen carrying 

 pieces of leaves to the nest. Within the nest they cut up the leaves 

 and pile them in beds, on which in the damp underground chamber 

 a fungus grows. The fmigus spores are eaten by the adult ants and 

 fed to the larvae. When a virgin queen of these ants is about to leave 

 the nest, she fills a pocket beneath her mouth with some of the fmigus 

 and carries it with her until she is mated and starts a home of her own. 

 In this way each species maintains a culture of its particular kind of 

 fungus. 



Many ants feed largely on honeydew, which they find on the leaves 

 of trees or get directly from the apliids, or plant lice, that make it. 

 Honeydew is a liquid fecal discharge of aphids and other sap-sucking 

 species containing a concentrate of the excess sugar they take in with 

 the sap of the plants on which they feed. Nevertheless, this "honey- 

 dew" is much sought after by the ants, and many of them have learned 

 that by stroking the aphids with their antennae, the latter may be in- 

 duced to evacuate a drop of their sugary excrement. Furthermore, 

 some ants collect the fall eggs of the aphids and keep them over winter 

 in their nests. In the spring they distribute the young aphids on 

 plants for feeding, those of tree species on the leaves of trees, those of 

 root species on the roots of their proper food plants, particularly com. 

 This complex behavior is hard to explain as mere instinct, and has 

 led some entomologists to declare that the ants are the most intelligent 

 of all insects. In fact, few other animals could remember through 

 the winter where they got the eggs. 



Finally, certain individuals of some ant species engorge themselves 

 to such an extent on honeydew that the abdomen becomes a great in- 

 flated sphere. These individuals are no longer able to walk, so they 

 suspend themselves by their legs from the roof of the nest chamber. 

 Here they hang and serve as foodstores for the others. On being 



