ANT 



269 



ANT 



out apparent suffering, merely digging them- 

 selves deeper into the ground when extremes 

 of heat or cold are to be guarded against. 

 Neither drought nor flood, unless too long con- 

 tinued, can destroy their communities, and 

 even food scarcity can be endured for a time. 

 The female, indeed, can store up within her 

 body enough food so that she does not need 

 to eat for the greater part of a year. No 

 wonder then, that ants are the "dominant" 

 insects, and that, as some authorities hold, 

 reptiles have developed scales, caterpillars hair 

 and animals fur, partially as defenses against 

 the everywhere-present little creatures. 



Ants establish more lasting communities, too, 

 than do any other of the lower animal forms. 

 A beehive may keep its tenants indefinitely, 

 but they are not the same tenants, for bees 

 are short-lived, the queen living but three 

 years, or thereabouts, and the workers but a 

 few weeks. The worker ants, on the other 

 hand, live from four to seven years, and it 

 is nothing unusual for a queen to attain the 

 age of fifteen years. 



The Three Classes. In studying ants, one 

 is constantly reminded of the closely related 

 bees, and one of the fundamental resemblances 

 consists in the number of life-forms. For 

 among the ants, as among the bees, there are 

 not only males and females, but workers, or 

 neuters, as well. These last are but undevel- 

 oped females, for the most part sterile, but 

 occasionally able to perform the important 

 function of laying eggs. The workers are by 



FEMALE 



V*)RKER 



FEMALE WITH WINGS 



MALE 



far the most numerous class, though each 

 ant-community has n number of females, and 

 not just one queen, aa do the bees. The 



females are practically always winged, and 

 usually the males, but the workers, which are 

 the smallest members of the colony, are wing- 

 less. There is no romance for them; no flight 

 into the air. They are born to work, and 

 they remain faithful to their tasks until they 

 die and are carried out of the nest. The 

 males, on the other hand, do no work, and their 

 life-period is short, for the ants are too careful 

 economists to support for a long time any 

 parasitic members. 



Parts of an Ant. Since it is impossible to 

 go anywhere without finding ants of some 

 species or other, everybody can recognize them 

 at sight. The most noticeable distinguishing 

 mark is the sharp differentiation between head, 

 thorax and abdomen in some species so pro- 

 nounced that it seems strange that the ants 

 do not actually break in two. It will be of 

 interest here to find out a little more about 

 the parts of an ant a few of the facts that 

 can be discovered best by means of a micro- 

 scope. 



The outer covering of ants is tough and 

 homy, in some species shiny, in others dull 

 and ridged. One of their chief cares is to keep 

 this horny covering spotlessly clean, and much 

 time is spent in the nest in polishing each 

 other with antennae and with tongue. In the 

 accompanying diagram the various parts are 

 clearly shown. First, there are the eyes very 

 curious and interesting organs. If examined 

 under a microscope, each of these "lateral 

 eyes," as the diagram calls them, is seen to be 

 made up of a group of little lenses, or facets, 

 fitted into each other like a honeycomb. Now, 

 ants cannot turn their eyes about to the right 

 or left, but each lens enables them to see in 

 a slightly different direction, so that alto- 

 gether they gain a fairly good all-round view. 

 These compound eyes are not the only ones 

 possessed by ants, for many of them have, on 

 the top of their heads, three ocelli, or little 

 eyes. But with all this provision ants do 

 not really see well. Why should they, when 

 most of their time is spent underground, in 

 (l:nknessT 



If eyes, however, are of no use to an ant in 

 its home environment, the same cannot be 

 said of the other sense organs, the antennae, 

 or feelers. These exceedingly delicate "horns" 

 are fitted into little sockets at the front of 

 the head, and are moved to and fro with 

 great rapidity when the ant is exploring or 

 finding its way in the dark. The antennae are 

 not organs of feeling merely; in some way not 



