THE INSIDE OF THE GRANARY
Underneath the dome of the ant house you see in the previous picture, are flat chambers like these, connected by galleries, in which the grain is stored. One is prepared not to be surprised at anything about ants, but listen to this: The Agricultural Ants not only gather and store this grain, but they actually plant and cultivate it. They sow it before the wet season in the Fall, keep it weeded, and gather it in June of the following year. Seems incredible, doesn't it? But I'm only telling you what McCook, an ant student, recognized everywhere as a reliable observer, saw these six-footed Texas farmers actually do.
Now here's a thing; you stow away a lot of seeds in a little hill where, of course, there's moisture, and what's going to happen? Those seeds are going to sprout and grow and spoil, and this, of course, destroys their value as food. Then what are you going to do? Of course, a human farmer would put his grains in a dry granary where they couldn't sprout, but you see the ants haven't any granary of that sort; nothing but those little holes in the moist ground. Just what they do to these seeds has not been discovered. They do something that keeps them from either spoiling or sprouting. But, when they get ready for these seeds to grow, they let them grow; not so that they can raise a crop, but for the same reason that the Chinaman lets the barley sprout that he uses in making chop-suey; so that it will be nice and soft to eat. This growing digests the starch in the seeds into sugar. When the sprouts have grown as far as the ants want them to, they gnaw the stalk a little, and cut off the roots with their mandibles. When this sugar-making has gone on long enough the ants bring all the plants out into the sun and let them lie there until they are nice and dry. Then they put them in their barns, and as long as Winter lasts they live on this sweet flour, grinding it in their mouth mills as they go along.
Why, it's like living on cookies, almost! Only the ants have been used to this steady diet of sweets for ages, and it doesn't hurt their little stomachs as it would ours.
CLEANING UP AFTER THE DAY'S WORK
While the Agricultural Ants don't take a bath after the day's work they do the next best thing. They give each other a kind of massage, and they evidently find it very enjoyable. You know how the cat loves to be stroked, dogs and horses to be patted, and little pigs to have their backs scratched. The ants below are giving each other a massage (left, abdomen; right, legs and sides). The lady above who seems to be braiding her back hair, is cleaning her antennæ.
This particular kind of a farming ant is called the Attabara, but there's another kind more wonderful still. If we want to call on them by their scientific names—these remarkable little creatures I'm going to tell about now—we'll have to go to Texas and ask if the Pogononyrmex barbatus family are at home.
"Oh, to be sure," says the gentleman who first introduced them to scientific society,[25] "just come with me."