Common Insect Enemies 121 



it is very intriguing the way ants do things. A few males 

 and females are hatched, the males mate with the females 

 and, having completed their life's work, immediately proceed 

 to die, and then each inseminated female, or queen, estab- 

 lishes a new community. To maintain her position as head 

 of the new colony, the queen sees to it that her offspring for 

 the next few years are all workers; and to make sure that the 

 workers keep their minds on their work instead of mooning 

 around, the mysterious law of the colony usually sees to it 

 that the workers are sexless. A similar arrangement in hu- 

 man society would have obvious advantages, but it is doubt- 

 ful if the idea would be readily accepted by the mass of our 

 citizens. 



One of the big tasks of the workers — perhaps the most 

 important — is the gathering of food, not only for themselves 

 but also for the queen and the numerous crops of developing 

 larvae. Some ants find other insects very tasty, but most of 

 the ants we encounter are vegetarians, by nature. And they 

 are particularly partial toward sweets. As they forage over 

 wide areas for their nourishment, some ants invariably find 

 their way into your home and soon locate your hoard of sugar 

 and other foods on your pantry shelves. If most of us 

 stumbled upon what to us was an almost inexhaustible sup- 

 ply of food we would keep that information to ourselves and 

 would do our best to keep our neighbors from finding out 

 about it. But that is because we are uncivilized. Ants are 

 different. They are not selfish like we are: they immediately 

 broadcast word of their discovery to all their fellow workers, 

 and soon the safari is on. Where yesterday there was a 

 single ant, today there are hundreds, all busily engaged in 

 carrying away food that we had hoped to have for our very 

 own. 



