A COMMON RED ANT
(Formica sp.)
Ants are undoubtedly the highest, structurally and mechanically, of all insects, and at the same time the most efficient. Their social organization has been the admiration of human beings from the earliest times, because the interest of the individual is merged so completely into that of the colony; but, as Wheeler remarks, their organization must strike the individualist with horror.
It is an organization of females, too. The workers are females, the soldiers are females, the nurses are females, and there is one queen mother for them all, who lays all the eggs of the colony. Where are the males, those representatives of society, those voters of our human colonies? They do not exist as such, for the males of ant colonies are but mates for the young queens. Together with them they leave the nest on their marriage day and together make the marriage flight, but as soon as this is over they die, and the colony gets on easily without them.
To man, who is the most rapidly evolving organism on the earth today, it is a strange thought that the most highly developed insect which the world has produced, and which has not changed materially since the Tertiary epoch, has relegated the males to the short-lived function of reproduction, leaving him no work to perform and getting rid of him as quickly as possible. Why did the ants, with their marvelous instincts, fail to conquer the world? Why have they stood still for thousands of years after they had perfected their social organization? Did they go as far as evolution could go when it leaves the male out of account? It is perhaps a comfort to think that, after all, they have failed and the man-guided organization of human beings has surpassed them in its development!
A BLACK ANT
It is strange to think that just because the sunlight which poured upon this little creature’s shiny body was reflected back against a photographic plate, its rays being made to diverge widely in so doing, we can get an image of this tiny ant as large as though it were a mouse.