48 BRITISH ANTS. 



however, some of these be at once removed from their nest, kept 

 until they are quite mature, and then returned, they will im- 

 mediately be recognized and accepted. This odour therefore is 

 produced in the individual itself, and does not come from an outside 

 source. 



When two ants meet they usually tap each other with their 

 antennae ; should one be a stranger, it is immediately threatened 

 with open jaws by the other. 



Bethe washed individual ants with alcohol to remove their own 

 odour, and then bathed them in the blood of other species of ants. 

 When he had bathed a strange ant A in the blood of a species B, 

 and introduced it into the nest of the latter, it was received in a 

 friendly manner. He then bathed an ant from B in the blood of A, 

 replacing it in its own nest, when it was treated as an enemy. 

 Wasmann, however, shows that Bethe did not carry the matter 

 far enough, and that after a time ants so treated were again recog- 

 nized as friends or foes, just as they would have been if they had 

 never been bathed. 



The facts that (1) different species of ants behave in different 

 ways ; (2) some species bring up strange pupae as slaves ; (3) 

 females which are temporary social parasites, and also other ants, 

 do enter strange nests both of their own and other species, and get 

 accepted ; (4) myrmecophilous beetles are accepted into other 

 nests of their own host ant, or even into those of other ants (Was- 

 mann and I have made numerous experiments on this point, and 

 many examples of the other points just mentioned will be found 

 in this book, under the different species) all prove that how ants 

 know each other is not a mere chemoreflex, but that memory, 

 experience, education, smell, touch, and sight, all enter into the 

 matter. 



Ants communicate with each other. 



Though ants cannot be said to converse in the ordinary sense of 

 the word, they actually do communicate with each other ; con- 

 veying intelligence, wishes, etc. 



This is proved by the rapidity with which a mass of ants will 

 pour out from their nest to assist any of their comrades which 

 have been attacked, and congregate on any food that one of their 

 number has found. Any such news may be conveyed by stridu- 

 lation (as before mentioned), by tapping each other with their 

 antennae, pulling at each other with their mandibles, butting each 

 other with their heads, saluting (as described by Crawley, p. 186), 

 tapping on the floor of the nest with their gasters (as I observed 

 in Leptothorax acervorum, p. 152), etc. Belt also believed ants could 

 communicate the presence of danger, of booty, etc. etc., to a distance 

 by the different intensity or qualities of the odours they gave off. 



Some ants when they wish to be fed by their fellows, stroke the 



