52 A NATURALIST IN HIMALAYA 



culties, so I thought that these rapacious workers 

 might, perhaps, behind their cruel nature, possess a 

 little spark of kindness. 



I imprisoned one of them by fixing its large abdomen 

 firmly in the earth and allowed the head and thorax 

 to project above the surface. But its fellow-ants 

 showed no compassion, no desire to rescue, not a spark 

 of pity. They attacked their imprisoned comrade as 

 though it was their greatest enemy. One endeavoured 

 to bite off its antennae, another to tear away its legs, 

 a third seized its narrow neck and used every effort 

 to decapitate it. All struggled with the prisoner to 

 drag it unmercifully from the pit. Nor did the 

 imprisoned ant see any sympathy in this rough treat- 

 ment, for it attacked every worker that approached, 

 opened wide its jaws, closed with its comrade as with 

 a foe and battled for its life. At length, having failed 

 by force to drag it from its prison, the workers com- 

 menced to dig. As they did not dig very intelligently 

 or show any co-operation in their actions, it took them 

 a long time to uproot their companion, now wounded 

 in the struggle. At length, having unearthed it, they 

 certainly bestowed on it no sympathy, but dragged 

 the unfortunate creature for provender into the nest. 

 Some ants may, perhaps, be imbued with a sense 

 of pity, but there is no compassion in these cannibals. 



It has frequently been observed that ants possess 

 the peculiar habit of carrying their companions about 

 in their jaws, but it has seldom been possible to detect 

 any purpose in this strange action. I have noticed 

 ants of many different species transferring their 

 comrades from place to place, but they always seemed 

 to lay them down and release them haphazard without 



