124 The Animal Mind 



is also against the existence of sound reactions in ants; 

 careful experiments by Fielde and Parker on a number of 

 species led to the conclusion that the only vibrations 

 responded to were those which were communicated 

 through the solid on which the ants stood, and received 

 through the legs (226). It is probable that the obser- 

 vers who have come to opposite conclusions have not in 

 every case been careful to exclude the possibility of such 

 vibration of the substratum. Wasmann, for instance, 

 thinks he has seen reactions to sound ; he noted that ants 

 in an artificial nest raised their antennae and lifted the fore 

 part of their bodies when he scratched with a needle on some 

 sealing wax with which the nest had been mended (759). 

 He also quotes Forel's account (230) of a species which 

 makes an " alarm signal" by striking the ground with its 

 abdomen : this, remarks Wasmann naively, must be per- 

 ceived by the ants, "otherwise it would not be an alarm 

 signal"! (760). If perceived, it may of course be as a 

 tactile rather than an auditory sensation. Weld has ob- 

 served reactions to the sound of whistles and tuning forks 

 in several species of ants, and even concludes that they 

 perceive the direction from which sounds come ; but since, 

 of the four observations upon which this latter opinion is 

 based, two were cases where the ants hurried toward the 

 sound and the others cases where they backed away from 

 it, the possibility of mere coincidence seems not to be 

 excluded (776). 



As regards the auditory sense in bees, there is again a 

 difference of opinion. They do, of course, make sounds, 

 and sounds of different quality, under different conditions. 

 Yet Lubbock entirely failed to get bees to respond to any 

 kind of sounds artificially produced (441), while Bethe urges 

 that the sounds produced by bees are involuntary, like the 



