Vol. XXIII, No. 8 



WASHINGTON 



August, 1912 



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NOTES ABOUT ANTS AND THEIR RESEM- 

 BLANCE TO MAN 



By William Morton Wheeler, Ph. D. 



Professor of Economic Entomology in Harvard University 



Dr. Wheeler is the author of an unusually entertaining hook, "Ants, Their 

 Structure, Development, and Behavior," published by the Columbia University 

 Press. The volume contains 6^0 pages and. several hundred illustrations, and is 

 probably the most scholarly and suggestive work on the subject that has been 

 published. The pictures illustrating this article are from the above hook. 



IT IS sometimes profitable to turn 

 away from the consideration of the 

 social and economic problems, which 

 so constantly beset us, to a study of the 

 social insects and their methods of solv- 

 ing the problems which they, too, have 

 had to face during their long and strenu- 

 ous evolution. 



Though in most respects man and the 

 insect differ enormously, both neverthe- 

 less display some remarkable convergent 

 similarities. They are the only two suc- 

 cessful and dominant animal types of the 

 present age, and, so far as they are so- 

 cial, not only have had to encounter the 

 same obstacles, but have learned to over- 

 come many of them in the same manner. 

 The social insects, however, have been 

 more successful than man in organizing 

 stable communities, because they have 

 frankly trusted and followed their in- 

 stincts and have therefore carried their 

 social organization to its logical, or per- 

 haps we had better say instinctive, con- 

 clusion, whereas man's intellectual proc- 

 esses and the ideals and dissentions to 

 which they give birth forever prevent a 

 definitive solution of economic problems 



and keep him in a state of active and 

 ceaseless evolution. 



We naturally find, therefore, that the 

 stable and well-regulated insect societies, 

 which have "neither guide, overseer, nor 

 ruler," have always aroused the admira- 

 tion of those who long for a rigid com- 

 munistic control of human society, while 

 the individualist turns away from them 

 with a feeling akin to horror. 



THREE GREAT PROBLEMS OE EXISTENCE 



It is well known that three great prob- 

 lems must be solved by every organism 

 that would survive in the struggle for 

 existence ; first, how to obtain a sufficient 

 quantity of the right kind of food ; sec- 

 ond, how to reproduce its kind and bring 

 up its offspring, and, third, how to pro- 

 tect itself and its off'spring from the in- 

 jurious effects of both the lifeless and 

 the living environment. And although 

 all animals are constantly impelled to the 

 solution of these problems by the primal 

 instincts of hunger, love, and fear, the 

 solution is often extremely difficult. And 

 it is especially difficult in the social and 

 colonial animals, because these must en- 



