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ECOLOGICAL 131 



the fishes, or wolves in a pack surround their victim. It may be in 

 making a communal shelter or store, as in termitary and honeycomb. 

 It may be in the utilisation of other creatures, as some ants show 

 with the Aphids which they milk, or leaf-cutters with the peculiar 

 fungus which they cultivate. These concerted enterprises sometimes 

 take subtle forms, as in the slave-making raids of the Amazon ants, 

 in which established slaves may come to play the major part in the 

 recruiting. Then there are the "wars" of some ants and the social 

 plays of others. There is community singing among the howling 

 monkeys. Also social in many cases is the assembling of migrants, 

 and even such details as the wedge-formation, so familiar in wild 

 geese, but seen in many other birds. 



(6) In another group may be ranked a variety of activities in 

 which the members of a society communicate with one another. 

 Clearest, of course, is the use of sounds, simple kin-calls to begin 

 with, but rising to the use of distinct "words" with specific meanings. 

 But information or excitement may be broadcast by odours, as in 

 the case of the "sting odour" and "queen odour" in hive-bees. 

 A worker-bee that has found a treasure of nectar makes this known 

 in the hive by her peculiar dance, and also b}^ the odour of the 

 flowers she has lately visited. In the antennary communications 

 between ants there is probably a combination of tactile and olfactory 

 stimuli. Many mammals have gestures as well as words. 



(c) But the society expresses itself also in what may be called 

 traditions, customs, conventions, and "folk- ways". These have a 

 mental aspect in instincts and predispositions, with their attendant 

 feelings, and an objective aspect in certain cases in the permanent 

 products, such as the termitary-edifice, or in the embodied organisa- 

 tion of the society, such as its polymorphism, if that exists. Among 

 ants the appeal of the hungry must be met ; among bees the workers 

 must ascend through a graduated apprenticeship; among chim- 

 panzees a cry of protest arouses an uproar of indignation in the 

 whole company. But it is a difficult task to formulate the laws of 

 animal societies. 



SUMMARY. — As we have indicated, there are diverse tjpes of 

 society among animals. Some communities of true ants are simply 

 large families, the progeny of one queen, occasionally with grandchil- 

 dren, which are produced parthenogenetically by the normally non- 

 reproductive "workers". Each of the communities of the unrelated 

 white ants, or termites, consists of one large family, the progeny of a 

 pair, with the same occasional addition as before on the part of some 

 female workers and soldiers. Among true ants all the workers are 

 arrested females; among termites they are arrested females and 

 males, but only the former are ever reproductive. In other communi- 

 ties of true ants there are several large families, each the progeny of 



