Democratic Sentinel, Volume 15, Number 41, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 October 1891 — Driver Ants. [ARTICLE]

Driver Ants.

There are certain ants that show wonderful intelligence, and the “driVer ants” not only build boats but launch them, too; only these boats ale formed of their own bodies. They are called “drivers” because of their ferocity. Nothing can stand before the attacks of these little creatures. Large pythons have been killed by them in a single night, while chickens, lizards, and other animals in Western Africa flee from them in terror. To protect themselves from the heat, they erect arches under which numerous armies of them pass in safety Sometimes the arch is’ made of grass and earth gummed together by some secretion, and again it is fqrmed by the bodies of the larger ants, which hold themselves together by thelx strong nippers, while the workers pass under them. At certain times of the year, freshets overflow the country inhabited by the “drivers,” and it is then that these ants go to sea. The rain comes suddenly, and the walls of' their houses are broken in by the flood, but instead of coming to the surface In scattered hundreds, and being swept off to destruction, out of the ruins rises a black ball that rides safely on the water and drifts away. Ati the first warning of danger, tbe little creatures run together; and form a solid ball of ants, the weaker in the center; often this ball tektrger than a common base-ball; and in this way they float about until they lodge against some tree, upon the branches of which they are soon safe and sound.— St. Nicholas.