Turner, Homing of Ants. 379 



Not only have I caused ants to lose their way in the woods, but 

 I have seen them lose their way on my Lubbock islands, which 

 lack two inches each way of being two feet wide by two and a half 

 feet long. Often, when I had disturbed a nest to remove the pupae, 

 the ants would rush out upon the island in all directions. After 

 the excitement was over, many, sometimes all, of these ants would 

 find their way back to the nest. In a large number of cases, how- 

 ever, instead of going home, a large number would congregate in 

 groups on different parts of the island. These groups would 

 usually be located on the peripheral ditch. There the ants would 

 remain huddled together until discovered by ants that had spon- 

 taneously left the nest to seek what was to be found. Then they 

 would be carried back to the nest.* 



In my numerous experiments with individual, marked ants, I 

 have incidentally obtained abundant evidence of the ease with 

 which ants can be caused to lose their way. It was not an uncom- 

 mon thing for an individual to fail completely to find its way home 

 from one of my stages on the Lubbock island. After numerous 

 random movements such an ant would usually settle down on 

 some part of the stage or else busy itself rearranging the pupae in 

 the center of the stage. In almost all such cases, individuals from 

 the same colony would learn the way to the nest and pass and 

 repass the lost one, w^hich seemed to have given up all attempts to 

 reach the nest. In many cases the lost ant was finally carried to 

 the nest by some other ant. This has happened in almost all the 

 species examined; but it happened more frequently with Myrmica 

 punctiventris Rog. than with any other. I have seen individuals 

 lost within a foot of the nest on a piece of cardboard only six inches 

 by six inches, and connected with the Lubbock island by an incline 

 only twelve inches long! 



To test this matter further the following experiment was devised. 

 Myrmica punctiventris Rog. was selected, partly because of the 

 slowness of its movements and partly because experience had 

 taught me that individuals of that species were easily lost. The 



■* If, as many claim, ants can communicate by means of their antennae and say at least "Follow me," 

 it might be asked parenthetically why did not these ants use their antennae and tell those lost ants to follow 

 them, instead of laboriously carrying them home one by one ? For over two years I have had colonies 

 of many of our common ants in the laboratory, and so far as my observation goes, whenever an ant wants 

 another ant to go to a particular place, it picks it up and carries it there. Not only have I seen them 

 thus carry workers, males, and even young females into the nest, but I have seen them thus carry workers 

 and lay them down on a pile of pupae. In no case have I seen any certain evidence of an antennal 

 language. However, this is a problem that I intend to investigate more carefully in the near future. 



