THE " SOCIOLOGY " OF ANTS.
ONE of the most valuable of the scientific tendencies of the present day is the very useful study which is devoted by our naturalists to the habits of the more sociable of the animal races. Sir John Lubbock has made the scientific observation of the sociable insects,—particularly bees, wasps, and ants, —a subject peculiarly his own ; and his admirable example has evidently produced excellent effects on the other side of the Atlantic. Only this week, the Times has republished for us, from the "Proceedings of the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences," a paper by the Rev. H. C. McCook on the personal cleanliness of the agricultural ant of America, from which it appears that the Transatlantic ant is at least as conspicuous for the quality which is said to be next to godliness, and as anxious to aid its fellow - ants in the business of their " sanitary ablutions," as Sir John Lubbock has shown various species of English ants to be. Lord Beacons- field's cry of " Sanitas sanitation, omnia sanitas !" is evidently substantially adopted by the ants of both worlds; and no doubt the ant has been helped to gain the habits which this maxim summarises, by the law of the survival of the fittest. Clearly ants, like men, cannot live healthily in crowded communities without well-marked restrictions on personal habits which would tend. in any way either to spread disease, or even to impede individual freedom of motion. If ants, living in such vast crowds and within such narrow spaces as, by comparison, almost make London itself seem a spacious and thinly-populated city, were either to lose their activity through getting clogged with foreign sub- stances, or to contract diseases such as dirt is known to foster in all organic bodies, the whole society would soon come to an end. Indolence and inactivity amongst the workers in such crowded communities would mean the immediate failure of the commis- sariat, and consequently death. Contagion in such communities would mean plague, and consequently death. Hence it is clear enough that any community of ants whose workers were endowed with cleanly and active habits would have the greatest possible advantage over other communities not so fully endowed with those habits, whence, perhaps, the successful evolution of this great principle of practical " sociology " among the ants of both hemispheres. The Philadelphian naturalist suggests, indeed, that the ants whom he has watched in a state of captivity may devote more attention to their personal cleanliness than they would devote in a state of nature. But this we take leave to doubt. It is clear at least that they bring their instincts with them into captivity, and that if, in the comparatively limited numbers of a captive community, the law of cleanliness asserts itself so strongly, it is because it has been so impera- tively impressed upon. them by the accumulated experience of thousands of generations. It is clear that either the habit of personal cleanliness, or amongst the aristocratic and dependent races of ants, the possession of slaves who attend to the per-
sonal cleanliness of their masters, is an absolute condition of social well-being. Either the ant must keep itself clean and help to keep its companions clean, and take delight, as Mr.
McCook and Sir John Lubbock have described to us, in that cleanliness ; or the slave-races must keep themselves and their masters clean, as sedulously as they feed themselves and their masters. The social habits of the ant would probably become ultimately impossible, were they not protected by these habits of sedulous cleanliness.
So far it is clear that habits of gregariousness even among insects may tend to evolve other habits which, if not exactly ethical, are in the sententious wisdom of mankind classed as " next " to godliness. And no doubt this remark is very en- couraging to that new school of scientific thought which is en- deavouring to show how the principles of morality are a perfectly inevitable outgrowth of the laws which show how to make society coherent and strong. And it is very interesting, therefore, to ask ourselves how much further, at least in the case of insects, this principle will take us? Does it tend to produce any vestige of morality, or only to come as near to it as cleanliness does to godliness, which, we venture to assert, in spite of the maxim we have referred to, is not near at all, but a very long way off indeed ? Now on this point Sir John Lubbock has made some most in- teresting observations. lie has carefully studied the domestic and foreign policy of the ant, with a view to the sentiments, " altruistic " or otherwise, which appear to be indicated, and has come to some very remarkable results indeed. The foreign policy of the ant is very simple, and rather Chinese (of the old school). It consists entirely in killing a foreigner who intrudes in any way on the territory of the community. And as a foreigner, an ant appears to regard any individual which has not been produced in its own nest, even though it he of the same species. Sir John Lubbock has shown most effectually that ants distinguish, after very long periods of separation, the ants which have belonged to their own nest, and even the ants reared from the pupae produced in their own nests. These they will hospitably receive after a period which would seem to make individual identification hardly possible ; while strangers,—ants of another nest, though of the same species, or ants reared from the pupae of ants of another nest,—they will attack and destroy. That is a conclusion which Sir John Lubbock has established with regard to a good many different species of ants, and in a large number of cases for each species. or do we regard it as one intrinsically fatal to the idea that habits of gregarious- ness tend eventually to " evolve " a morality. Certainly, as we have said, there are plenty of parallels amongst human savages, and even amongst civilised peoples in the historic period, for a foreign policy almost as simple. And one can well understand that before it is possible for a Jew to look upon a Samaritan as his neighbour, he must first have learned to understand what neighbourliness really means in the case of Jews. But Si John Lubbock's observations have gone a good deal further, and touched a much more interesting point than this. He has tried to make out how far neighbourliness, as amongst ants of the same nest, really goes. It is known, as we have said, that ants of the same nest will help to cleanse each other, and sometimes, we believe, they will carry a wounded and disabled ant, that has come to grief outside it, into the nest. But these are habits obviously essential, the one to the cleanli- ness of the nest, the other to a kind of co-operation neces- sary for war with hostile ants. Does the sense of friendli- ness go further, and extend to relieving ants of the same nest from difficulties in which they find themselves, simply for the sake of fellow-citizenship, and without any rela- tion to the public safety ? As far as Sir John Lubbock's very curious investigations go, we believe the answer is entirely in the negative. We extract a passage condensing his results from the very interesting paper published in the fourteenth volume of the " Proceedings " of the Linnman Society (pp. 274-276) :—
"To test the affection of ants belonging to the same nest for one another, I tried the following experiments. I took six ants from a nest of Formica fusca, imprisoned them in a small bottle, one end of which was left open, but covered by a layer of muslin. I then put the bottle close to the door of the nest. The muslin was of open texture, the meshes, however, being sufficiently large to prevent the ants from escaping. They could not only, however, see one another, but communicate freely with their antennae. We now watched to see whether the prisoners would be tended or fed by their friends. We could not, however, observe that the least notice was taken of them. The experiment, nevertheless, was less conclusive than could be wished, because they might have fed at night, or at some time when we were not loosing. It struck me, therefore, that it would be in- teresting to treat some strangers also in the same manner. On Sep- tember 2nd, therefore, I put two ants from one of my nests of F. fiesca into a bottle, the end of which was tied up with muslin as de- scribed, and laid it down close to the nest. In a second bottle I put two ants from another nest of the same species. The ante which were at liberty took no notice of the bottle containing their imprisoned friends. The strangers in the other bottle, on the contrary, excited them considerably. The whole day one, two, or more ants stood sentry, as it were, over the bottle. In the evening no less than twelve were collected round it, a larger number than usually came out of the nest at any one time. The whole of the next two days, in the same way, there were more or less ants round the bottle containing the strangers, while, as far as we could see, no notice whatever was taken of the friends. On the 9th the ants had eaten through the muslin, and effected an entrance. We did not chance to be on the spot at the moment, but as I found two ants lying dead, one in the bottle and one just outside, I think there can be no doubt that the strangers were put to death. The friends throughout were quite neglected. September 21st.—I then repeated the experiment, putting three ants from another nest into a bottle as before. The same scene was repeated. The friends were neglected. On the other hand, some of the ants were always watching over the bottle containing the strangers, ilt1 biting at the muslin which protected them. The next morning at 6 a.m. I found five ants thus occupied. One had caught hold of the leg of one of the strangers, which had unwarily been allowed to protrude through the meshes of the muslin. They worked and watched, though not, as far as I could see, with any system, till 7.30 in the evening, when they effected an entrance, and immediately attacked the strangers. September 2411.—I repeated the same experiment with the same nest. Again the ants came and sat over the bottle containing the strangers, while no notice was taken of the friends. The next morn- ing again, when I got up, I found five ants round the bottle contain- ing the strangers, none near the friends. As in the former case, one of the ants had seized a stranger by the leg, and was trying to drag her through the muslin. All day the ants clustered round the bottle, and bit perseveringly, though not systematically, at the muslin. The same thing happened all the following day. These observations seemed to me sufficiently to test the behaviour of the ants belonging to this nest under these circumstances. I thought it desirable, however, to try also other communities. I selected, there- fore, two other nests. One was a community of Polyergus rufe,;cen,R, with numerous slaves. Close to where the ants of this nest came to feed, I placed as before two small bottles, closed in the same way— one containing two slave ants from the nest, the other two strangers. These ants, however, behaved quite unlike the preceding, for they took no notice of either bottle, and showed no sign either of affection or hatred. One is almost tempted to surmise that the war-like spirit of these ants was broken by slavery. The other nest which I tried, also a community of Formica fusca, behaved exactly like the first. They took no notice of the bottle containing the friends, but clustered round and eventually forced their way into that containing the strangers. It seems, therefore, that in these curious insects hatred is a stronger passion than affection."
From this it would appear that while the habit of living in communities and co-operating in labour, the habit which the late Professor Clifford used to speak of with strange moral enthu- siasm as " band-work,"—importing into the phrase, of course, all those disinterested ideas which human nature has borrowed from a totally different region,—has resulted in excellent and mutually helpful sanitary habits, and also in what we may call very rigid alien laws, it does not seem to have resulted in any- thing which looks in the least like personal affections. The desire to destroy the aliens in the neighbourhood of the nest was keen and active. A patrol was set to watch them. The desire to help the captive fellow-citizens in the same neighbourhood was apparently non-existent. In all the species tried, no notice was taken of the fellow-citizens in difficulty ; while every notice was taken of the strangers in ambush. Sir John Lubbock ex- presses this mildly, when he says that it appears that in these curious creatures hatred is a much stronger passion than affec- tion. The evidence here given rather goes to show that fear or hatred is very active indeed, while of pure affection in the sense of love of fellow-citizens for their own sake—as distin- guished from the interest of the nest—there is not a trace. of conservative of it, unless they were completed and regulated by that very refined, and subtle, and far-reaching principle, of which the human conscience is the highest earthly form. The first condition of successful social life on a large scale taken alone, would be, we believe, not the existence of the higher indi- vidual affections, but the non-existence of such affections. The mechanical order of one vast community of insects, crowded together in a minute space, would be as much disturbed by strong personal ties between individuals and individuals, as an army would be by the existence of such ties (if they were not kept in check by the spirit of discipline), between the soldiers of one regiment and the soldiers of another regiment performing dif- ferent functions in a different part of the field. The gregarious principle taken alone is not the germ of the human affections. It is the germ of a kind of organisation very much more perfect, for very much lower ends ;—but one not in the least tending to the most perfect development of the sort of order for which the sense of a moral law, and the existence of a moral govern- ment, are the great essentials.
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