' Such fraternal
conduct would be very creditable to the worker honey-ants, were it not
for a horrid doubt insinuated by Dr. McCook that perhaps the insects
don't know they could get at the honey by breaking up the body of their
lamented relative. If so, their apparent disregard of utilitarian
considerations may really be due not to their sentimentality but to
their hopeless stupidity.
The reason why the ants have taken thus to storing honey in the living
bodies of their own fellows is easy enough to understand. They want to
lay up for the future like prudent insects that they are; but they can't
make wax, as the bees do, and they have not yet evolved the purely human
art of pottery. Consequently--happy thought--why not tell off some of
our number to act as jars on behalf of the others? Some of the community
work by going out and gathering honey; they also serve who only stand
and wait--who receive it from the workers, and keep it stored up in
their own capacious indiarubber maws till further notice. So obvious is
this plan for converting ants into animated honey-jars, that several
different kinds of ants in different parts of the world, belonging to
the most widely distinct families, have independently hit upon the very
self-same device. Besides the Mexican species, there is a totally
different Australian honey-ant, and another equally separate in Borneo
and Singapore. This last kind does not store the honey in the hind part
of the body technically known as the abdomen, but in the middle division
which naturalists call the thorax, where it forms a transparent
bladder-like swelling, and makes the creature look as though it were
suffering with an acute attack of dropsy.
Pages:
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281
282
283
284
285
286
287
288
289