Rensselaer Democrat, Volume 1, Number 11, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 24 June 1898 — ANTS ARE LIKE PEOPLE. [ARTICLE]

ANTS ARE LIKE PEOPLE.

Nurse Their Fick and Take Care of the Young and Feeble. Sir John Lubbock delivered a lecture on “Ants” at the rooms of the Zoological society. The lecture was under the auspices of the Royal British Nurses’ Association, says the London Chronicle. Sir John described bls method of observation. He had made the ants which he kept for observation so comfortable that they lived as nearly as possible under their natural conditions. He found that their life was much longer than had been supposed. Ants watched over their young with skill and tenderness. A dispute between ants was never seen In the same nest. Yet they were brave In the defense of their own homes. They never turned on a weak or wounded companion. One of his ants came into the world a cripple, but was carefully tended and fed by others for months. All the ants In the community knew one another, but would not tolerate a stranger even of their own species in the nest. He had made fifty drunk, and incapables He then put twenty-five near the nest to Vvhich they belonged. They were carried back to the nest by their friends, where no doubt they slept off the effects of their involuntary debauch. The other twenty-five they took and threw into the moat that surrounded the ants’ park. There were many kinds of ants in the tropics. It was said that in America there was a species which gathered grain, then prepared the ground and sowed the grain for further use. This he could not accept without more definite proof.