THE APPARENT JINGOISM OF ANTS.
SIR JOHN LUBBOCK has told most of us almost all we know about Ants, and yet in the very amusing book on "Ants, Bees, and Wasps,"* which he has just published, he certainly suggests a good many more questions about them than he answers. We suppose that the same might be said of all the best books on man, and certainly we make the remark in no spirit of disparagement to the very entertaining accounts of the social organisation of ants which Sir John gives us. But as he is inclined to claim for ants the next ;place in the scale of intelligence to human beings, and appears to consider it one of the grounds of that claim that, like human beings, they have introduced a system of slavery, and have found it injurious to their own energy and self- respect, we wish he had given some attention to the question why ants alone, of all creatures in the world, appear to possess this strange instinct for robbing the young of other species of their own race, and bringing them up to assist in the work and organisation of their community. It is quite clear that if the workers thus introduced from outside had the smallest revolutionary disposition, they could often mutiny with success against the original dynasty, and make the nest their own. In some cases, the queen and her relations are so absolutely dependent on their imported labour,—the coolies, as we may call them, which the rulers in- troduce in their infancy—that without the ministrations of these aliens they could not even eat the food within their reach ; having lost,—alone amongst animals, says Sir John, unless it be a few ant-loving beetles,—the instinct of feeding them- selves. But besides the power of letting the queens and their relatives perish of hunger, if they chose to exert it, there seems to be no reason why the so-called slave races should not so feed some of the grubs they capture as to turn them into rival queens, if at least the assumption be true, as Sir John seems to believe, that the whole difference between a queen and an ordinary worker depends on a difference of food and treatment in early life. If that be so, there seems no reason in the world why, if they wished it, the borrowed workers who manage the nest, might not so treat some of the larys of their own race plundered from unensla.ved nests, as to produce a queen of their own race, whose standard they might then raise against that of the former queen or queens of the nest, and so revolutionise the State, and turn the alien dynasty out of it. We find it difficult to understand why, among creatures which are advanced enough to choose the unfortunate alternative of extending their operations by coolie labour, there should be no evidence of the wish to turn the tables on the slave-makers,—a course which would apparently be so very much easier than the planning of those raids in which the servitors are first captured. Invading the nests of other tribes, in order to carry off the grubs of workers for industrial use, is so very aggressive and original a bit of strategy, that in comparison with it, the revo • lationary rising which might reclaim the nest for those who do the labour, would seem natural and almost a matter of course. And yet we never hear of anything of the sort. Why are • Ante, Bees, and Wasps. A Record of Observation on the Habits of the Social Hymenopt ra. By Sir John Lubbock, Bart., M.P., P.R.S. Londoni Regan Paul,
Trench, and Co.
there no servile wars, to balance and avenge the slave-making expeditions ? Why, especially when everything is in the hands of the kidnapped workers, as it certainly is in the case of most of the " slave-making" tribes,—Polyergice ricfescens, for instance, or still more, Strougylognathus, and most of all, Anergates, —do we hear of no fall of those feeble dynasties which do not so much hold the sceptre, as have it held up for them by their industrious servitors, and then of the restora- tion of the crown to the race which really works and rules ? Why are these fain&rnt queens not only tolerated, but appa- rently maintained by those who might upset them in a moment? Where military despotisms seem so common, and aggressive wars so much a matter of course, why are mutinies unheard of, and democratic upheavals unknown ? We could very well understand the plea that there is no sufficient intelligence amongst ants to resent the condition of slavery, if that plea were but compatible with the obvious fact that there is sufficient intelligence amongst ants to desire kidnapping expeditions ; but why, if there be intelligence enough for the offensive movement which disturbs the equilibrium, should there not be intelligence enough for the resistance and reactionary move- ment which restores it ? Surely the desire for the command of mere labour,—if that were the motive,—is a more arti- ficial, and, so to say, elaborate state of mind, than the desire for homogeneity of race ? Surely it is easier to imagine even a creature of dull instincts expelling the alien rulers from its home, than it is to imagine a creature of the same sort of instincts planning a raid for the purpose of in- troducing a colony of young strangers ? And the remarkable thing is that if Sir John Lubbock has proved anything by his experiments, it is that most races of ants feel much more jealousy of the presence of any sort of stranger, than they feel desire for the liberation or recovery of their friends. Only, as this never seems to apply to the coolies imported in their rudimentary state for the very purpose of working the organi- sation of the nest, so also,—which is much odder,—it never seems to be applied by these coolies to the mistresses whom they serve. Indeed, quite the contrary, for it is clear that many of the military expeditions planned by the impotent dynasty, for instance, of the Strongylognathus ant, would never have even a chance of success, but for the military exploits of the slaves who aid their raids. Instead of turning on their mistresses in their need, these workers of another race help them as loyally in the new aggressions made for the sake of carrying off more slaves, as they do in the work and organisation of the nest itself. And this seems to show that Sir John Lubbock is wrong when he guesses (p. 106) that the indifference dis- played by the ants of a nest of Polyergas rufescens to the neighbourhood of two strange ants, a neighbourhood which other nests of ants had strongly resented, might be explained by supposing that "the warlike spirit of these ants was broken by slavery." If the much degenerated Strongylognathus ant (as Sir John deems it) is cordially assisted by its slaves in military expeditions, it can hardly be that a much less de- generate type has lost its warlike spirit through the demor- alising influence of slavery. The slaves,—if slaves they be,— appear to be just as closely identified with the military instincts of their mistresses, as they are with the civil organisation of their kingdom. Slavery,—or the actual condition of these alien servitors, whatever it may really be,—does not appear to diminish the fighting instinct, at all events in the slaves, but only to engage it entirely on the part of the nest in which they first make their entrance from the chrysalis state into active life ; and to us the wonder is why, though there is no inherited instinct in favour of having only ants of the same race in the same nest, there should be so strong an inheritance of instinct in favour of what we may call the Jingoism of ants,—in other words, marauding expeditions tending to strengthen the popu- lation of the nest from which those expeditions proceed. Is, then, Jingoism more deeply rooted in the insect world than even the patriotism of race ?
Apparently so, if it be Jingoism, or anything analogous to Jingoism, which prompts these forays for larvs and pupas. But, considering that there is nothing like the desire for mere conquest, visible in these expeditions, considering that the invading ants never seem to take possession of the ant- hill they invade, but only to rob it of its Ian's and pups, considering, again, that the moment the defending force retires, the invaders never seem, according to Sir John Lubbock's account, to press their enemies, but devote themselves at once
to the carrying-off of the infant ants,—it seems very doubtful whether the real object to which this aggressive instinct tends is the gain of force to the nest, so much as the gain of new subjects for the maternal care of workers who find themselves insufficiently providel with satisfaction for their nursing in- stinctv. The working ants being all females and laying very few eggs themselves, probably find that the queens of their nest do not provide them with subjects sufficient for the exercise of their maternal instincts, and after building roomy apartments for the reception of a much larger number of larvx and pupa) than they have to attend to, they ask perhaps to be led out to battle, that they may provide themselves with a sufficient number of orphans on which to exercise their ma- teraal feelings. The reason we suppose this to be the object of the instinct, rather than any ambitious motive for the mere enlargement of the power 'Of the nest, is this,—that the first result of these raids must be—not to provide the nest with new force, but, on the contrary, with new burdens. A very much greater amount of labour must be required from the old workers after the raid than before, since none of the new acquisitions, not even the most advanced pupa, can be in a condition to do any- thing for themselves for some time after their capture, so that for many days after the expedition, the nest of aggressors must be very much weaker for purposes of war, as well as much harder worked in relation to ordinary duties, than it was before. Now, it is obvious that the instinct immediately gratified is far more likely to be the disturbing instinct which causes these raids, than any instinct which can be gratified only ulti- mately, and after a considerable period of abeyance. And, therefore, we are disposed to believe that it is the inade- quately satisfied maternal instincts of the workers, which really lead to these unprincipled raids on the offspring of other nests. The Romans made raids on the Sabines to obtain wives,but the formica sangainea makes raids on the formica fano to obtain, not wives, but children, to nurse and feed and care for. It is, we suspect, a sort of aggressive paedagogy—a passion for the extension of formican Kindergarten—which leads the ants into these unscrupulous raids to carry off the children of their enemies. The food is prepared, the nurseries are prepared, but where are the children ? That is the condition of things, as we imagine, which leads the ants into their aggressive wars.
Sir John Lubbock may, perhaps, suggest that this explanation hardly consists with the displeasure with which a republic of ants in which there is no queen often meet a queen who is offered them. He has shown that though he can gain the crown for a queen by offering her to a few disunited ants, and then gradually increasing the number of her subjects, he cannot introduce a queen into a nest which has long been organised without any queen, except at the peril of her life. And yet as a queen would promise a liberal progeny to the nest where at present there are but few young ones,—and they not workers, but only males, which are very short-lived,—it would seem that there can- not be so ardent a desire for offspring as our explanation of the motives of raids on other ant-hills suggests. But then it must be remembered that the possession of a queen, though it may promise children for the future, does not at once gratify the instinct which the possession of lame and pupas would at once gratify ; and again, that it is not all ants' nests which do organise these raids for grubs and chrysales, nor is it at all periods that even the aggressive species of ants will start such expeditions. Therefore, it is quite conceivable that even though the conservatism of ants,—especially of ants in confinement, where there is no unlimited space at their dis- posal, — induces them to attack a stranger queen, yet when they are positively feeling the need of more maternal work to do, that need may well be sufficient to drive them into aggressive war.
As to the further question, why the working ants do not produce queens of their own race out of the captured larvre of their own race, instead of keeping the nest under the queens of a different race, we can only suggest that the patriotism of ants is probably local, and not one of pedigree,—that it con- sists in loyalty to the nest and the habits of the nest, loyalty to the father•Tand, not in loyalty to any race at all. In all probability, if the alien workers of a nest are capable of any feeling in the matter, they do not regard themselves as in any sense slaves, but rather as imported managers, with much more organising power than their queen or queens, whom they only con- descend to help by their artistic industry, on' condition that she supplies them with enough objects for their care. Sir John Lubbock suggests in one place that the slaves should rather be called auxiliaries than slaves, and this, we strongly suspect, is the key to the matter. The working ants, even when they are of another race from the queen, have never, we must remember, known any independent life in a nest of their own ; and all their instincts are no less gratified, perhaps even more completely gratified, in a nest where they are much superior in ability to the nominal dynasty, than they would be in their own original nest. The working ant, we should suspect, cares remarkably little who produces the children, provided she has the care of them, provided she superintends the whole organisation of the kingdom which the mother ant is incompetent to superintend for herself.
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