Ants, bees, and wasps : a record of observations on the habits of the social hymenoptera / by Sir John Lubbock.

  • Lubbock, John, Sir, 1834-1913.
Date:
1882
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Ants, bees, and wasps : a record of observations on the habits of the social hymenoptera / by Sir John Lubbock. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    them had been almost completely cleaned. One was attacked for about a minute soon after 11, and another a little later; but with these exceptions they were quite amicably received, and seemed entirely at home among the other ants. Thus every one of these thirty-two ants was amic- ably received. These experiments, then, seem to prove that ants removed from a nest in the condition of pupae, but tended by friends, if reintroduced into the parent nest, are recognised and treated as friends. Nevertheless the recognition does not seem to have been complete. In several cases the ants were certainly attacked, though only by one or two ants, not savagely, and only for a short time. It seemed as if, though recognised as friends by the great majority, some few, more ignorant or more suspicious than the rest, had doubts on the subject, which, however, in some manner still mysterious, were ere long removed. The case in which one of these marked ants was carried out of the nest may perhaps be explained by her having been supposed to be ill, in which case, if the malady is con- sidered to be fatal, ants are generally brought out of the nest. It now remained to test the result when the pupae were confided to the care of ants belonging to a different nest, though, of course, the same species. I therefore took a number of pupae out of some of my nests of Formica fnsca and put them in small