SOCIAL COMMUNITIES OF BEES AND ANTS 213 
observing among the workers, I took to be the male.” But 
there are some beetles which are not only tolerated, but fed 
by the ants with which they live. In the case of the genera 
Atemeles and Lomechusa, which are always found in or near 
ants’ nests, the good offices are reciprocal, for the beetles 
“have patches of yellow hairs, and these secrete some substance 
with a flavour agreeable to the ants, which lick the beetles 
from time to time. On the other hand, the ants feed the 
beetles ; this they do by regurgitating food, at the request of 
the beetle, on to their lower lip, from which it is then taken 
by the beetle. The beetles in many of their movements 
exactly resemble the ants, and their mode of requesting food, 
by stroking the ants in certain ways, is quite ant-like. So 
Fic. 25. —Beetle soliciting food from Ant (after Wasmann). 
reciprocal is the friendship, that if an ant is in want of food 
the beetle will in its turn disgorge for the benefit of its host. 
The young of the beetles are reared in the nests by the ants, 
who attend to them as carefully as they do to their own young. 
The beetles are, however, fond of the ants’ larve as food, and, 
indeed, eat them to a very large extent, even when their own 
young are receiving food from the ants. Wasmann (to whom 
we are indebted for most of our knowledge on this subject) 
seems to be of opinion that the ants scarcely distinguish 
between the beetle larvee and their own young; one unfortu- 
nate result for the beetle follows from this, viz. that in the 
pupal state the treatment that is suitable for the ant larve 
