ANTS AND ANT LIFE. 153 



CHAPTER XII. 



SLAVERY (Continued). 



rE habits of the F. sanguined, or sanguine ant, the 

 second European slave-making species, much resemble 

 those of the Amazons. But there is the essential difference 

 between them that the sanguine ants are not, like the 

 Amazons, wholly dependent upon their slaves, for they are 

 able to work and can feed themselves. They therefore 

 keep their slaves more as helpers than as servants, and do 

 not require nearly so large a number of them as do the 

 Amazons. They can even do without them, for Forel has 

 often found a nest of the sanguined quite without slaves, as 

 in the Maloggia Pass at the foot of Mount Tendre and else- 

 where. The marauding excursions of the sanguined are also 

 far less frequent than those of the Amazons and only take 

 place in each colony two or three times a year. The fused 

 and the rufibdrlis, or cunicularia, here also generally provide 

 the slaves, which work in common with their masters at 

 building dwellings and roads, as well as attending the larvae, 

 pupas, etc. ; occasionally slaves are taken from other species. 

 The sanguine ants are generally fond of honey, and tear 

 to pieces living insects in order to lick up the juices of their 

 bodies. They do not spare the slave-pupae brought in, and 

 sometimes even eat their own eggs, larvae, and nymphae, as 

 well as those of other species which they do not generally 

 enslave. They are quite able to distinguish the nymphae of 

 the males and fertile females of their slaves from those of 

 the workers, and kill the former while they spare the latter. 

 When Forel offered them a living wasp, it was seized by 

 four workers, sprinkled with poison and strangled. The 

 corpse was then torn in pieces. Amazons, which Forel had 

 brought up artificially with sanguine ants and four or five 

 other species, showed none of their usual ferocity and were 

 quite peaceable, and all those brought up together lived 



