Wars and Slavery in the Animal Kingdom. 61 



lick off the honey. Later on I placed the honey on my 

 finger. The ant had already become so tame that 

 she was not in the least disturbed by the odor of my 

 finger, whereas others would have been provoked to 

 a fight or would have been greatly alarmed. She 

 would quietly lick off the honey and then, without 

 resisting or trying to flee, allow herself to be seized 

 with a pincette by one of her legs and placed back in 

 her nest. This goes to prove that ants also are tama- 

 ble in spite of their excitable nature. The tamable- 

 ness of ants, like that of higher animals, is due to their 

 possessing the powers of sensitive perception and imag- 

 ination, upon which the intelligence of man acts to 

 accomplish his purpose. 



Against this parallelism an objection was raised 

 by Mr. Bethe. 1 To tame an ant, he says, takes 

 weeks and months ; but a dog may be tamed in a few 

 days; therefore the above mentioned fact presents no 

 proof of the existence of psychic faculties in ants! 

 Whether Mr. Bethe will succeed each time in taming 

 a vicious dog within a few days, is rather doubtful. 

 Nor is it at all true, that it takes several weeks or 

 months to tame an ant, e. g., a F. fusca or rufibarbis, 

 which are especially suitable for such experiments. 

 It is but required to mark a certain individual which 

 comes regularly to the feeding tube. If you are very 

 careful not to frighten the animal, it is possible to 

 train it in a few days, in the manner described above. 

 But if you wish to reckon the time needed for taming 

 an ant by beginning with the day on which she was 



*) "Duerfen wir den Ameisen und Bienen psychische Qualitaeten 

 zuschreiben ?" (Bonn, 1898), p. 23. 



