Rensselaer Republican, Volume 20, Number 44, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 5 July 1888 — HOW ANTS LIVE. [ARTICLE]

HOW ANTS LIVE.

Their Love of Cleanliness and Their Modes of Burial. In spite of the multifarious duties and tasks that are imposed on these tiny burghers, they still find time to clean and adorn their worthy little persons. No spot, no atom of dust or anything else uncleanly will they t,heir bodies. They get rid of the dirt with the brushy tufts on their feet or with their tongues. They act for all the world like domestic cats when they clean and lick themselves, and they assist one another at the toilet precisely like monkeys. Their sense of cleanliness goes so far that the naturalist often finds, to his unpleasant surprise, the colored marks that he had applied with so much care on his “trial ants” removed by their dirt hating friends. They keep their dwellings just as cleanly. But the conveying away of their deceased brethren, whose bodies they appear to regard with the greatest antipathy,gives them more trouble than anything else. When some members of ant community which Mr. Cook kept imprisoned died and could not be removed those remaining seemed affected with the greatest horror. For days the insects ran about seeking a way out, and ceased only when completely exhausted. The ants belonging to the camponorous species seized the dead and threw them into the water pail, which they converted into a sepulchre. Ordinarily,though, the ants are said to treat their dead with more reverence. They even possesss their own graveyards, which lie in Hie vicinity of their nests. They convey their deceased companions thither, where they lay them down in orderly little heaps or rows. - —-- —.— It is only the corpses of their fellows, however, that they treat in this manner. Dead strangers they throw out like something unclean, or tear the body in pieces. Even between the master and slaves of the same community Miss Trent says she has observed a mode of burial. While the masters find their last repose in a special graveyard, side by side, the slaves lie like heaped up refuse near the nest, despised equally in death as in life. The ant cemeteries are often thickly populated, for their life is short. The male lives only through one summer; the females live somewhat longer, and the workers die of old age in the eighth or tenth year. ... , ■ ' ,