50 A NATURALIST IN HIMALAYA 



their dead far away from their homes. These car- 

 nivorous ants, on the other hand, are degraded 

 cannibals, for they drag their dead back into the 

 nest and store them up as food. 



Unlike the harvesters, these carnivorous ants 

 have an indifferent sense of smell. Nothing fills a 

 community of harvesters with a greater feeling of 

 anger or throws it into such violent confusion as a 

 few particles of camphor scattered near the nest. 

 But these ants are quite unaffected by the camphor. 

 After recovering from their slight alarm at the sight 

 of the strange substance, they continue their work of 

 excavation ; they make no attempt to remove the 

 camphor ; they will even carry into their nests insects 

 soaked in a solution of the substance, and while every 

 harvester will spring backwards when it has arrived 

 within half an inch of a fragment, a carnivorous ant 

 of this species will cross and recross a mound of 

 camphor and apparently derive no more sensation 

 from it than if it were the hillock of earth that was 

 being built up outside the nest. The difference in 

 the sense of smell in the two species is readily 

 shown by drawing the finger across the path of a 

 returning ant between the insect and the nest. On 

 reaching the line made by the finger the harvester 

 is confused and lost, but the other, unaware of any 

 interference, continues on its path. 



This ant gains by acuteness of vision what it loses 

 by the poverty of its sense of smell. By sight it 

 recognizes the approach of a stranger and darts im- 

 mediately into its nest. Within the shelter of the 

 fissured aperture it peers outward with quivering 

 antennae, watching keenly every movement, and ready 



