176 Chapter IV. 



animals is a sensual impulse, not guided by reason 

 and reflection. 



This organico-sensitive nature of the nursing 

 instinct also explains, why it often extends to the 

 helpless offspring of other species, whose instinctive 

 behavior is somewhat similar to that of the animal's 

 own progeny. The sense-perception of these helpless 

 beings stimulates the nursing instinct of the old ones, 

 and therefore they "adopt" the young ones of 

 strangers. The smell of the larvae of Lomechiisa 

 strumosa is especially attractive to the sanguine slave- 

 makers;^ besides these larvae instinctively mimic the 

 attitudes and behavior of the ant-larvae, and although 

 they possess six feet, they do not make use of them, 

 but conduct themselves like helpless ant-larvae. For 

 these reasons they enjoy the most careful attention on 

 the part of their hosts. And as these beetle-larvae, 

 when fed by the ants, grow much faster than the ant- 

 larvae, they impress the instinctive nursing impulse of 

 the ants far more favorably than the latter, and hence 

 are the objects of ^'greater tenderness." At any dis- 

 turbance of the nest the workers first care for their 

 "adopted children" and bring them to a place of safety, 

 before they attend to their own offspring; yea, they 

 even neglect the rearing of the latter, their only care 



*) That the ants do not confound those coleopterous larvae with 

 their own on account of their shape and color, I ascertained, in May, 

 1897, by experiments with larvae of Anthonomus pomorum, which are 

 far more similar to ant-larvae than those of Lomechusa. The Antho- 

 nomiij'-larvae were instantly seized as prey and torn to pieces by the 

 sanguineas of my observation nest. On the whole, it must not be 

 imagined that the Lomechusa-larvae make the same impression as their 

 own on the sensitive perception of the ants; the impression is at most 

 similar, but more agreeable, which probably explains why the ants prefer 

 the adopted larvae to their own. 



