158 ANIMAL LIFE 



them to their own nest. Indeed, they go even further ; they 

 may make slaves of the conquered ants. There are numer- 

 ous species of the so-called slave-making ants. The slave- 

 makers carry into their own nest the eggs and larvae and 

 pupae of the conquered community, and when these come 

 to maturity they act as slaves of the victors that is, they 

 collect food, build additions to the nests, and care for the 

 young of the slave-makers. This specialization goes so far 

 in the case of some kinds of ants, like the robber-ant of 

 South America (Eciton), that all of the Eciton workers have 

 become soldiers, which no longer do any work for them- 

 selves. The whole community lives, therefore, wholly by 

 pillage or by making slaves of other kinds of ants. There 

 are four kinds of individuals in a robber-ant community 

 winged males, winged females, and small and large wing- 

 less soldiers. There are many more of the small soldiers 

 than of the large, and some naturalists believe that the few 

 latter, which are distinguished by heads and jaws of great 

 size, act as officers. On the march the small soldiers are 

 arranged in a long, narrow column, while the large soldiers 

 are scattered along on either side of the column and appear 

 to act as sentinels and directors of the army. The obser- 

 vations made by the famous Swiss students of ants, Huber 

 and Forel, and by other naturalists, read like fairy tales, 

 and yet are the well-attested and often reobserved actual 

 phenomena of the extremely specialized communal and 

 social life of these animals. 



86. Other communal insects. The termites or white ants 

 (not true ants) are communal insects. Some species of 

 termites in Africa live in great mounds of earth, often 

 fifteen feet high. The community comprises hundreds of 

 thousands of individuals, which are of eight kinds (Fig 93), 

 viz., sexually active winged males, sexually active winged 

 females, other fertile males and females which are wingless, 

 wingless workers of both sexes not capable of reproduc- 

 tion, and wingless soldiers of both sexes also incapable of 



