Wars and Slavery in the Animal Kingdom 55 



3. The Pretended "Automatism" in the Psychic 

 Life of Ants. 



Animal intelligence, therefore, has no part either 

 in the slavemaking expeditions of ants, or in their 

 military tactics. Yet, the application of these instincts 

 is not mathematically uniform. They are influenced 

 and governed by the changeable sensitive perceptions 

 and individual conditions of the single ants, and thus 

 great variability exists within specified limits. Those 

 animal psychologists who, in contradistinction to the 

 higher animals, call ants mere "instinct automatons" 

 or even mere "reflex machines," are asked to consider 

 that the instincts of ants are neither more nor less 

 "automatic" than those of dogs, apes and other verte- 

 brates. Instances of intelligence in the true sense of 

 the term can be discovered with the latter as little as, 

 and even much less than, with ants. Various differ- 

 ences, however, of individual character, and of indi- 

 vidual action, determined by different sense perceptions 

 and sense experiences, occur with ants as well as with 

 the higher mammals. 



On turning over the stone or the piece of sod 

 covering a middlesized nest of F. sanguinea, and thus 

 suddenly exposing the interior to the light, we perceive 

 all the inhabitants in tumultuous excitement. Part of 

 the ants furiously biting and ejecting poison attack 

 the invader; others take care of their imperilled off- 

 spring and in haste carry down the eggs, larvae and 

 pupae to the lower chambers of the nest; other indi- 

 viduals of the same colony seem destitute of the 

 chivalrous spirit of their race for the defense of 



