Wars and Slavery in the Animal Kingdom. 51 



tioned way. With the Amazons, however, this system 

 of reconnoitering cannot possibly have anything to do 

 with individual intelligence, but only with instinctive 

 sense faculties. This we have sufficiently proved 

 before. Hence, the necessary conclusion is, that also 

 in the case of the sanguine slavemakers, instinct aided 

 by sensitive experience will suffice to explain the same 

 fact. Therefore, to postulate intelligence proper for 

 such an explanation would be arbitrary humaniza- 

 tion of the brute. 



The other seemingly very intelligent feature in the 

 military tactics of F. sanguinea is their habit of setting 

 out in smaller detachments more or less independent, 

 and uniting only when one of the bands has some- 

 where met with stronger resistance. Since most 

 colonies of the negro ant (F. fusca), which is the 

 ordinary object of their slave hunting expeditions, are 

 not very populous, and as the inmates generally take 

 to their heels at the first attack of the sanguineas, the 

 latter's tactics of dividing their forces is evidently 

 appropriate to the usual conditions. Yet, if the assault 

 is directed against an unusually populous and well 

 defended nest of F. fusca, or against a large nest of 

 the far more warlike F. riMarbis, the same tactics 

 frequently prove very disastrous to a considerable part 

 of the assaihng sanguineas. The first troop of the 

 marauders venturing too close to the hostile nest is 

 attacked and overpowered by the defenders, and sus* 

 tains great losses, before any of the robbers are able 

 to hurry back to call for assistance. If in the military 

 tactics of F. sanguinea there were any question of intel- 

 ligence or rational deliberation on the part of the single 



