the; hone;y ant, whose stomach is deiveloped into a food re;se;rvoir for the; 



rest of thf ant colony 



The picture shows the honey ant (Myrmecocystus horiideorum) in the act of regurgitating 

 food to workers of the ordinary form. (After H. McCook.) (See text, page 736.) 



ductive center of the colony, but all the 

 workers act as though they were obsessed 

 with a perfect mania of reproduction and 

 nursing. Unless this fact is clearly ap- 

 preciated, much of the behavior of ants 

 will remain enigmatic, meaningless, or 

 absurd. 



Nothing shows more clearly the 

 strength of the maternal instincts in ants 

 than the development of the colony from 

 its inception till it becomes in turn the 

 mother of other colonies. After mating 

 with the male high in the air, the queen 

 descends to earth rnd loses her wings, 

 either by breaking them off at the base 

 against the stones or blades of grass or 

 by tearing them away with her mandibles, 

 for they are to be of no further use to 

 her. She then seeks some small cavity 

 under a stone or piece of bark, or digs 

 one in the ground, and closes it after her, 

 so that she is completely shut off from 

 the world (see picture, page 763). 



In this little cell she passes days, weeks, 

 or even months without food while wait- 



ing for the eggs in her ovaries to mature. 

 The now useless wing-muscles, which fill 

 her large thorax, dissolve in the blood 

 and go to build up the yolk of the eggs, 

 and a similar fate overtakes the great 

 masses of fat which she stored away in 

 her abdomen during her larval life in the 

 maternal nest. 



The; infant offspring fffd thf starv- 

 ing MOTHER 



Eventually she lays a small batch of 

 eggs and cares for them till they hatch as 

 helpless grub-like larvae. These she feeds 

 with her saliva, but as the supply of this 

 is meager, the larvae grow slowly, pupate 

 prematurely, and emerge as very small 

 and feeble workers. They nevertheless 

 at once set to work to expand the colony 

 by opening up a gallery to the outside 

 world and go forth to forage. They 

 bring in food to their starving mother 

 and henceforth spend their days in for- 

 aging, enlarging the nest by excavating 

 additional galleries and chambers, and in 



746 



