Jungle Peace

by William Beebe

Half of the bottom of the pit was a sort of flat table-land several inches higher than the rest, and the first thing the ants did was to carry all their booty to this steppe, in pieces or bodily, some of the unfortunate creatures still protesting weakly as they were dragged along. In fifteen minutes the lowest part of the pit bottom was deserted, and after much hesitation I vaulted down and found a footing reasonably safe from attack.

Two traffic columns had already reached the summit, and the others were forging rapidly ahead. All used a similar method of advance. A group of mixed castes led the way, acting as scouts, sappers, and miners. They searched out every slope, every helpful step or shelf of sand. They took advantage of every hurdle of white grass-roots as a welcome grip which would bind the shifting sand grains. Now and then they had to cross a bare, barren slope with no natural advantages. Behind them pressed a motley throng, some still obsessed with the sapper instinct, widening the trail, tumbling down loose, dangerous grains. Some bore the first-fruits of victory, small ants and roaches which had been the first to succumb. These were carried by one, or at most by two ants, usually with the prey held in the jaws close beneath the body, the legs or hinderpart trailing behind. In this straddling fashion the burden was borne rapidly along, an opposite method from the overhead waving banners of the leaf-cutters.

With these came a crowd of workers, both white and black-headed, and soldiers, all empty-jawed, active, but taking no part in the actual preparation of the trail. This second cohort or brigade had, it seemed to me, the most remarkable functions of any of the ants which I saw during my whole period of observation. They were the living implements of trail-making, and their ultimate functions and distribution were so astounding, so correlated, so synchronized with the activities of all the others that it was difficult not to postulate an all-pervading intelligence, to think of these hundreds and thousands of organisms as other than corpuscles in a dynamic stream of life controlled by some single, outside mind.

Here, then, were scores of ants scrambling up the steep uneven sides, over ground which they had never explored, with unknown obstacles confronting them at every step. To the eye they were ants of assorted sizes, but as they advanced, numbers fell out here and there and remained behind. This mob consisted of potential corduroy, rope-bridges, props, hand-rails, lattices, screens, fillers, stiles, ladders, and other unnamable adjuncts to the successful scaling of these apparently impregnable cliffs. If a stratum of hard sand appeared, on which no impression could be made, a line of ants strung themselves out, each elaborately fixing himself fast by means of jaws and feet. From that moment his feverish activity left him: he became a fixture, a single unit of a swaying bridge over a chasm; a beam, an organic plank, over which his fellows tramped by hundreds, some empty, some heavily laden. If a sudden ascent had to be made, one ant joined himself to others to form a hanging ladder, up which the columns climbed, partly braced against the sandy wall.

At uncertain, unguarded turns a huge soldier would take up his station, with as many functions and duties as a member of the Broadway traffic squad. Stray, wandering ants would be set right by a single twiddle of antennæ; an over-burdened brother would be given a helping jaw and assisted for some distance to the end of his beat. I was especially interested in seeing, again and again, this willingness to help bear the burdens. It showed the remains of an instinct, inhibited by over-development, by ultra-specialization of fighting paraphernalia, still active when opportunity gave it play. At the first hint, by sound or smell, of danger, the big soldier whirled outward and, rearing high on his legs, brandished his mighty blades in mid-air. Here was an ideal pacifist, who could turn his sword into a plowshare at will, and yet keep the former unsheathed for instant use.

When I watched more closely, I detected more delicate gradations of mutual aid. At the same level in two columns of ascent, the same stratum of hard sand was encountered. To one column the sand presented a rough surface which gave good foothold. Here the single line of ants which was ranged along the lower edge of the trail, in lieu of hand-rail, all faced downward, so that the ants passing above them walked partly on the abdomens and partly on the hind legs of their fellows. In the second column, the surface of the sand was smooth, and here the burdened ants found great difficulty in obtaining a foothold. In this instance the supporting gang of ants faced upward, keeping their place solely by their six sturdy legs. This left head and jaws free, and in almost every case they helped the passage of the booty by a system of passing from jaw to jaw, like a line of people handing buckets at a fire. The rightful carriers gave up their loads temporarily and devoted their attention to their own precarious footing.

I learned as much from the failures of this particular formation as from its successes. Once a great segment of a wood-roach was too much for the gallant line clinging to the sides of the pit, and the whole load broke loose and rolled to the bottom. Of the hand-rail squad only two ants remained. Yet in four minutes another line was formed of fresh ants,—ants who had never been to the spot before,—and again the traffic was uninterrupted. I saw one ant deliberately drop his burden, letting it bounce and roll far down to the bottom of the pit, and instantly take his place in the line of living guardrails. The former constituents of the line had clung to the roach segment through all its wild descent, and until it came to rest at the bottom. Without a moment's pause, they all attacked it as if they thought it had come to life, then seized it and began tugging it upward. In a fraction of time, without signal or suggestion or order, the hand-rails had become porters. The huge piece of provender had rolled close to an ascending column on the opposite side of the pit, and up this new trail the bearers started, pulling and pushing in unison, as if they had been droghers and nothing else throughout the whole of their ant-existence.

One climax of mutual assistance occurred near the rim of the pit on a level with my eyes, where one column passed over a surface which had been undermined by heavy rain, and which actually overhung. I watched the overcoming of this obstacle. All the ants which attempted to make their way up at this point lost their footing and rolled headlong to the bottom. By superformicine exertions a single small worker at last won a path to the rim at the top. Around the edge of the pit innumerable ants were constantly running, trying, on their part, to find a way down. The single ant communicated at once with all which came past, and without hesitation a mass of the insects formed at this spot and began to work downward. This could be done only by clinging one to the other; but more and more clambered down this living ladder, until it swayed far out over the vastness of the pit, three inches in length. I had never lost sight of the small worker, who had turned on his tracks and was now near the bottom of the ladder, reaching wildly out for some support—ant, grass, or sand. I was astonished to see that, as the length and consequent weight of the dangling chain increased, the base support was correspondingly strengthened. Ant after ant settled itself firmly on the sand at the top, until a mat of insects had been formed, spread out like animate guy-ropes.

At last the ultimate ant in the rope touched the upraised jaws of the soldier far below. The contact acted like an electric shock. The farthest ant in the guy-rope gang quivered with emotion, a crowd of ants climbed down and another up, and bits of insect and spider prey began to appear from the depths of the pit, over the living carpet suspended from the brim. For an inch the droghers climbed over the bodies braced against the cliff. Then, where the surface became smooth, the dangling chain came into use. Before the rim of the pit was reached, the chain had become a veritable hollow tube of ants, all with heads inward, and through this organic shaft passed the host from the ascending column. But it was far more than any mechanically built tube. When an extra large piece of loot came up, the tube voluntarily enlarged, the swelling passing along until the booty and its bearers emerged at the top.

Within five minutes after this last column was completed, there passed over it, out of the pit, a daddy-long-legs with legs trailing, perhaps the same one which I had seen in the tragic little dance of death. There followed two silvery-gray ants, a wood-roach in two installments, part of a small frog, three roaches, and two beetles. These latter gave a great deal of trouble and tumbled down the cliff again and again.