Go to the Ant

I HAVE been reading lately some of Dr. August Forel’s studies on ants, and am amazed at the richness of his experiments, carried on through an entire lifetime. As he patiently follows and faithfully notes the daily and hourly life of these little insects for years together, his glance goes deep to the heart of nature and at times lifts a corner of the veil of mystery that shrouds our own instincts.

Dr. Forel discovers in his ants, here and there, a spark of the reflecting consciousness, of the individual will. It is only a tiny luminous point, piercing the darkness at remote intervals. The analogy between certain social phenomena observable among these little creatures and what happens among us, may help us to understand ourselves.

I shall confine myself to noting here those of Forel’s experiments which have to do with certain psycho-pathological conditions in the terrible problem which so lately held us all in its grip, now happily relaxed — War.

The ants are to other insects, says Dr. Forel, what man is to other mammals. Their brain surpasses in relative volume and in complication of structure that of all other insects. If they do not attain the great individual intelligence of the superior mammals, they are ahead of all animals in social instinct. It is not surprising, therefore, that their social life resembles in many points that of human beings. Like the most advanced human societies, theirs are democracies — and warring democracies. Let us watch them at work.

The Ant-State is not confined to the ant-hill: it has its territory, its domain, its colonies, and like the colonial powers, its stations of repose and revictualing. The territory: a meadow, several trees, a hedge. The domain of exploitation: the ground and under the ground, and the louse-plants— these cattle that they milk, care for, and protect. The colonies: other nests more or less close to the metropolis and more or less numerous (sometimes more than two hundred), communicating with each other by open roads or by subterranean channels. The warehouses: little nests or earth-houses for the ants who travel far and are tired, or are surprised by bad weather.

Of course, these states try to enlarge themselves. So they start fighting. The disputes over the land at the frontier of two big ant-hills are the usual causes of the most obstinate wars. The louse-plants are another great bone of contention. With certain species the subterranean domains — the roots of plants—are equally important. Other species live exclusively by war and spoil. The Polyergus rafescens (Huber’s ‘Amazon’) disdains to work and is no longer able to do so; it practises slavery, and is served, cared for, and nourished by its herds of slaves, which expeditionary armies abduct from the neighboring ant-hills in the form of nymphs and cocoons.

War is thus endemic; and all the citizens, the worker-ants, of these democracies are called upon to take part in it. With certain species (Pheidole pallidula), the military class is distinct from the worker class; the soldier is exempt from all domestic labors, lives a garrison life, idle, with nothing to do except during the hours when he must defend the doors with his head. (He is used also in the office of butcher: he cuts up the prey into small pieces.) Nowhere does one see chiefs (at least, not permanent ones); neither kings nor generals.

The expeditionary armies of Polyergus rufescens, which vary in their number from one hundred to two thousand ants, obey currents that seem to come from little groups scattered here and there, now at the head, now at the tail. In the midst of a march one sees the main body of the army stop abruptly, undecided, immobile, as if paralyzed; then, suddenly, the initiative springs from a small nucleus of ants who throw themselves upon the others, strike them with their foreheads, start off in a certain direction, and carry the rest along.

The Formica sanguinea practises clever military tactics. It is not the compact mass àla Hindenburg, but separate platoons kept constantly in touch with each other by couriers. They make no frontal attack, but try to surprise on the flank, to spy on the movements of the enemy, like Napoleon aiming through rapid concentration to be the stronger at a given point and moment. They know, too, as he did, how to work upon the morale of the enemy, to seize the psychological instant when his faith or courage fails, and at that moment precipitate themselves upon him with no regard for his number; for they know that at present one of themselves is worth a hundred of the others in a panic. Like good soldiers, however, they do not seek to kill, but to conquer and reap tire fruits of victory. When the battle is won, they install a custom-house at each door of the conquered ant-hill, whose officers allow the enemy to flee, but on condition that they carry off nothing. They pillage as much, and kill as little as possible.

Among species of equal strength which are fighting for their frontiers, war does not continue indefinitely. After days of battle and glorious hecatombs, it seems as if the two states recognize the impossibility of attaining the aim of their ambitions. The armies then retire, by common accord, from the two sides of a frontier-limit accepted by both camps with or without treaty, and in any case observed with more rigor than with us, where it is a matter of mere ‘scraps of paper.’ For the ants of both states halt strictly at the limit defined, and do not pass beyond it.

But what may be of even greater interest to us is to observe in what manner the instinct of war makes its appearance in our brothers the insects; how it develops, and whether or not it is irrevocable or subject to change. Here Forel’s experiments lead to most remarkable observations.

J. H. Fabre, in a celebrated passage of his Vie des Insectes, writes that ‘ brigandage is the law in the mêlée of the living. . . . In nature, murder is everywhere; everything encounters a fang, a dagger, a dart, a tooth, pincers, claws, a saw, atrocious snapping machines, etc.’ But he exaggerates. He sees wonderfully the facts of inter-killing and inter-eating; he fails to see those of mutual aid and association. In a fine book by Kropotkin these are pointed out, in nature viewed as a whole. And Forel’s very precise observations show that, with the ants, the instinct of war and rapine encounters contrary instincts on its way, which can successfully arrest or modify it.

Forel establishes, in the first place, that the instinct of war is not fundamental: it is not found at the dawn of the ant’s existence. Placing together freshly hatched ants of three different species, and giving them cocoons of six different species to take care of, Forel obtains a mixed ant-family living together in perfect harmony. The only primordial instinct of the newly hatched is domestic labor and the care of larva;. It is only later that the ants learn to distinguish a friend from an enemy, to realize, that is, that they are members of an ant-hill and must fight for it.

The second remark, still more surprising, is that the intensity of the fighting instinct is in direct proportion to the collectivity. Two ants of enemy species, meeting alone on a road at a great distance from their nest and from their people, avoid each other and pass on, each by a different way. Even should you take them from the midst of a general battle, in the very act of fighting, and place them together in a small box, they would not do each other the slightest harm. If, instead of only two, you should shut up a larger number of enemy ants in a small space together, they will make a beginning of a fight, without vigor or continuity, and very often end by becoming allies. Moreover, adds Forel, the alliance once made cannot be unmade.

But replace the same ants in the midst of their people, separate carefully the two tribes, place between them a reasonable distance, permitting them to live in peace, apart: they will hurl themselves upon each other, and the individuals who avoided each other with repugnance or fear a moment before, now kill each other with fury.

This epidemic sometimes takes on a strictly pathological character, as with the Polyergus rufescens. In proportion as it spreads and the conflict continues, the combative fury becomes a frenzy.

The same ant that might show itself timid at the beginning is possessed by a sort of frantic madness. It recognizes nothing, throws itself upon its companions, kills its slaves who strive to calm it, bites everything it touches, including bits of wood, and seems unable to recover its senses. The others, generally the slaves, are obliged to gather about it in groups of twos and threes, to take hold of its feet and caress it with their antennæ, until it has regained — shall I say its reason? Why not? Had it not lost it?

Up to this point we have dealt only with general phenomena, obeying more or less fixed laws. But here we are confronted with the appearance of individual phenomena whose initiative will curiously run counter to the instinct of the species, and, more curiously still, make it deviate from its route, or destroy it.

Forel places a number of ants of enemy species, sanguinea and pratensis, in a glass bowl together. After several days of war, followed by a sullen and suspicious armistice, he introduces among them a tiny, extremely hungry new-born pratensis. It runs to those of its own species, asking for food. The pratenses repulse it. The innocent one then turns toward the enemies of its race, the sanguineœ, and, according to the custom of the ants, licks the mouth of two of them. The two sanguineee are so seized by this gesture, which upsets their instinct, that they disgorge the honey to the little enemy. From then on all is said, and forever. An offensive and defensive alliance is concluded between the little pratensis and the sanguineœ, against those of its race. And this alliance is irrevocable.

Another example: a common danger. Forel places in a sack together a swarm of sanguineœ and a swarm of pratenses, shakes them up, and leaves them for an hour; after which he opens the sack, placing it in direct communication with an artificial nest. For the first few seconds there is general bewilderment, frenzied terror; the ants no longer recognize each other, threaten with their mandibles, and flee from each other in distracted side-rushes. Then, gradually, calm is reëstablished. The sanguineœ are the first to move the cocoons, all the cocoons, of both species. Certain pratenses imitate them. A few fights still occur here and there, but they are isolated, and more and more rare. From the following day on, all work together. Four days later, the alliance is complete— the pratenses disgorge nourishment to the sanguineœ. At the end of the week, Forel carries them near an abandoned ant-hill. They take possession, helping each other in the moving, carrying each other. Only a few isolated individuals of both species, irreducible old nationalists, doubtless, keep their sacred hate, and end by destroying each other. A fortnight later, the mixed ant-hill is flourishing, the communion perfect; the dome, usually covered with pratenses, is now red with martial sanguineœ, the moment danger threatens the common state.

Continuing the experiment, Forel goes the following month to the old pratensis hill, takes another handful of pratenses and places them in front of the mixed ant-hill. The new-comers throw themselves upon the sanguineœ. But these respond without violence; they are content to roll the others on the ground and let them go again. The pratenses do not understand it. As for the other pratenses, those of the mixed hill, they avoid their former sisters, do not fight them, but transport their cocoons to the new home. It is the newcomers who are violent. The following day, however, part of them have been admitted into the mixed hill; and peace soon comes to stay. In no case does one see the pratenses of the mixed anthill ally themselves with their newly arrived sisters against the sanguineœ. The friendly alliance is stronger than fraternity of race; between the two enemy species, hate is henceforth vanquished.

Such examples suffice to indicate the fatal error of those who believe in the quasi-sacred immutability of instinct, and who, having placed in this category the instinct of war, see there an enforced fatality, from the bottom to the top of the chain of beings. In the first place, instinct admits of all degrees of command, inflexible or flexible, absolute or relative, durable or transient, not only from one genus to another, but in the same genus from one species to another,¹ and in the same species from one group to another. Instinct is not a starting-point, but already a product, of evolution; and with the latter, is always progressing. The most fixed instinct is merely the oldest one.

One must admit, then, after the preceding examples, that the warring instinct is not so profoundly rooted, so primitive, as it is said to be, since it may be combatted, modified, curbed, in certain species of ants which are nevertheless warring species.

And if these poor insects are capable of reacting against it, of transforming their nature, of following up a war of conquest by peaceful coöperation, a period of state enmity by that of state alliance, nay more, of mixed and united states — if this is possible, will man admit himself to be more bound by his worst instincts, and less able to master them? ‘War abases us to the level of the beast,’wrote Madame L. Kufferath (in the Revue mensuelle for July, 1918). War abases us still further if we show ourselves less capable of disengaging ourselves from it than certain animal societies. It would be somewhat humiliating to admit their superiority. But who knows?

For my part, I am not so sure at bottom that man is, as he says, the king of nature: he is far more its devastating tyrant. I believe he has many things to learn from these animal societies, older than his own, and of infinite variety. But it is not a matter of prophesying here whether mankind will ever succeed (any more than the ant-world) in completely dominating its blind instincts. What strikes me in reading Dr. Forel, however, is that there would seem to be for the ants, as well as for men, no radical, absolute, definite impossibility of such a conquest. And that progress is not impossible, — even if it should not be realized, — is to me a less distressing thought than to know that, no matter what one does, one knocks against a stone wall. It is the closed window, well choked up with dirt, behind which is the luminous air. It will perhaps never be opened. But there is only a pane to shatter. One free action would suffice.