Homes Without Hands: Being a Description of the Habitations of Animals, Classed According to Their Principle of Construction

There is a species of Ant in Ceylon which makes living bridges in precisely the same manner as the Driver Ant. In Mr. E. Sullivan's “Bungalow and the Tent” there is the following passage: “I have seen Ants form a bridge from one stick to another. I even saw one leave his companions, who were clustered at the end of a stick, unable to reach another at a short distance, make a considerable circuit, ascend the stick they were aiming at from another direction, and by stretching out his body as far as possible, enable the pioneer of the main body to reach him, and thus complete the chain of communication, by which the rest immediately crossed. It would be difficult to prove that this was not reason.”

Finding that the comparatively gradual action of fire permitted the active insects to escape before the heat finally reached them, Dr. Savage waited until they had settled in their home, and then poured upon them a few gallons of boiling water, which was instantaneously fatal. As for cold water, they seem to care little for it; having been immersed for twelve hours, and although they were apparently dead when removed, yet they soon recovered themselves, and ran about as lively as ever. Their tenacity of life is indeed wonderful, and injuries which would immediately kill almost any creature seem to have no immediate effect upon their vigor. Another fact illustrating their tenacity of life may here be stated.

“The head of one of the largest class, when dissevered from the body, grasped the finger of an attendant so furiously as to cause an immediate flow of blood. It was left in a glass tumbler from three P.M. till the next morning at eight o'clock, when the finger was again applied, and apparently as severe a wound as before inflicted. Another individual of the same class was decapitated at seven A.M., and at half past nine next morning, twenty-six and a half hours from the time of decapitation, a piece of newspaper was held between the jaws, which it grasped and retained with considerable force.

“I then applied the small finger of my right hand, which it bit severely; indeed, so powerful was the grasp, that the point of the mandibles met beneath the cuticle. It then partly withdrew one mandible, and, pointing it more perpendicularly, penetrated deeper than the other, and thus at every stroke giving to the mandible a direction more vertical, wounding and cutting wider and deeper, precisely in the manner of the insect in possession of all its parts and powers. The sensation at each thrust was like that of a pin, and equally painful; and when the mandibles were withdrawn, the blood flowed as freely. The head continued to give signs of life for more than thirty-six hours after decapitation. The body to which it belonged lived still longer, or more than forty-eight hours.”

It is a very remarkable fact that the insect should be so tenacious of life under circumstances that would be instantly fatal to most creatures, and yet should die suddenly under conditions in which many insects live and thrive. The reader will remember that the direct action of the sun's rays will kill the Driver Ant in less than two minutes, and yet there are ants of the same country which run about freely in the blazing sunshine, traversing with impunity the heated ground, which blisters the bare hand, and being able to secrete abundant stores of the liquid which they use in making their habitation.

In Dr. Livingstone's well-known work, there are several interesting accounts of ants and their habits, and one anecdote bears so aptly on the subject that I give it in the writer's own words.

After describing the terrible drought at Chonuane, when the River Kolobay ran dry and the fish perished, when the crocodile himself was stranded and died, and the native trees could not hold up their leaves, he proceeds as follows: “In the midst of this dreary drought, it was wonderful to see those tiny creatures, the Ants, running about with their accustomed vivacity. I put the bulb of a thermometer three inches under the soil in the sun at midday, and found the mercury to stand at 132° to 134°; and if certain beetles were placed on the surface, they only ran about a few seconds and expired.

“But this boiling heat only augmented the activity of the long-legged Black Ants; they never tire; their organs of motion seem endowed with the same power as is ascribed by physiologists to the muscles of the human heart, by which that part of the frame never becomes fatigued, and which may be imparted to all our organs in that higher sphere to which we fondly hope to rise.

“Where do these Ants get their moisture? Our house was built on a hard, ferruginous conglomerate, in order to be out of the way of the White Ant, but they came despite the precaution; and not only were they in this sultry weather able individually to moisten soil to the consistency of mortar for the formation of galleries, which in their way of working is done by night (so that they are screened from the observation of birds by day in passing and repassing toward any vegetable matter they may wish to devour), but, when their inner chambers were laid open, these were also surprisingly humid; yet there was no dew, and the house being placed on a rock, they could have no subterranean passage to the bed of the river, which ran about three hundred yards below the hill. Can it be that they have the power of combining the oxygen and hydrogen of their vegetable food by vital force as to form water?”

In corroboration of this opinion, Dr. Livingstone mentions an insect found in Angola, and which is allied to the common cuckoo-spit (Aphrophora spumaria) of England, which has the property of pouring out great quantities of water, so that a group of seven or eight insects will produce three or four pints of water in the course of the night. After stating that he believes the water to be produced, not from the sap of the tree, but from the atmosphere, he proceeds as follows:

“Finding a colony of these insects busily distilling on a branch of the Ricinus communis, or castor-oil plant, I denuded about twenty inches of the bark on the tree-side of the insects, and scraped away the inner bark, so as to destroy all the ascending vessels. I also cut a hole in the side of the branch, reaching to the middle, and then cut out the pith and internal vessels. The distillation was then going on at the rate of one drop in each sixty-seven seconds, or about two ounces five and a half drams in twenty-four hours. Next morning the distillation, so far from being affected by the attempt to stop the supplies, supposing they had come up through the branch from the tree, was increased to a drop every five seconds, or twelve drops per minute, making one pint in every twenty-four hours.

“I then cut the branch so much that during the day it broke; but they still went on at the rate of a drop every five seconds, while another colony on a branch of the same tree gave a drop every seventeen seconds only, or at the rate of about ten ounces four and one fifth drams in every twenty-four hours. I finally cut off the branch; but this was too much for their patience, for they immediately decamped, as insects will do from either a dead branch or a dead animal. The presence of greater moisture in the air increased the power of these distillers; the period of greatest activity was in the morning, when the air and every thing else was charged with dew."

Three species of Driver Ant are known, namely, the common species, which has already been described, Anomma Burmeisteri, and a smaller species, Anomma rubella.

The two first insects are deep, shining black, and resemble each other so closely that an unpracticed eye could not distinguish between them, while the last may be easily known by its brownish-red hue.

The specimens which have already been mentioned are now before me, and curious beings they are. The largest are black, with a slight tinge of red, and have an enormous head, almost equaling one third of the entire length. It is deep and wide as well as long, as indeed is necessary for the attachment of the muscles which move the enormous jaws. These weapons are sharply curved, and when closed they cross each other, so that when the insect has fairly fixed itself, its hold can not be loosened unless the jaws are opened. It is useless, therefore, to kill the ant, for its head will retain its grasp in death as well as in life. Besides the sharp points of the mandibles, they are farther armed with a central tooth, which is so formed that when the mandibles are quite closed, and the points crossed to the utmost, the tips of the central teeth meet and form another means of grasping.

There is no vestige of external eyes, and even the half-inch power of the microscope fails to show the slightest indication of visual organs. As, however, the horny coat of the head is sufficiently translucent to permit the articulation of the jaws to be seen through it, when a very powerful light is thrown upon the head and the eyes of the observer are well sheltered, it is possible that the insect may have some sense of sight, and, at all events, will be able to distinguish light from darkness.

The limbs are of a paler red than the body, and although they are slender and delicate, their grasping power is very great. Two of my specimens had grasped each other's limbs with such force that they could not be separated without damaging the insect, and it was not until the rigid joints were softened with moisture, and then with the aid of a magnifier, that I succeeded in disengaging the insects.

The smaller specimens are not so black as the larger, nor are their jaws so proportionately large, but they are still formidable insects, if not from their individual size, yet from their collective numbers and their reckless courage, which urges them to attack any thing that opposes them. Fire will frighten almost any creature, but it has no terrors for the Driver Ant, which will dash at a glowing coal, fix its jaws in the burning mass, and straightway shrivel up in the heat.

In the collection of the British Museum may be seen a very remarkable nest, which is made by some species of wasp at present unknown.

The material of which it is formed is mud or clay, which is worked by the insect until it has attained a wonderful tenacity and strength, and is rendered so plastic as to be worked nearly as neatly as the waxen bee-cell. It is of rather a large size, measuring about thirteen inches in length by nine in width, and filled with combs. Unfortunately, in its passage to this country it was broken and much damaged, but the fragments were collected and skillfully put together by Mr. F. Smith, who has succeeded in restoring the nest to its original shape, with the exception of an aperture through which the interior of the nest may be seen.

The accident was in so far an advantage that it gave opportunities of studying the construction of a nest which is at present unique, and which the officers of the Museum might be chary of cutting open, particularly as its materials are so brittle. The walls of the nest are remarkably hard and solid, but extremely variable in thickness, some parts being nearly three times as strong as others. The upper portions of the nest are the thickest, the reason for which is evident on inspecting the specimen.