Ant community government

Thus far our studies have been chiefly of the exterior of the ant commune. We are now to take a view of its internal economy.

The reader may have noticed that the author, in referring to the insects under observation, gradually passed from pronouns of the neuter to those of the feminine gender - or, rather, has used the two interchangeably.

This accords with facts. The worker ant, although in common parlance a "neuter," is structurally a female. In her the special function of the female, to produce the eggs from which the young are reared, has been subordinated, though not wholly atrophied; for workers occasionally drop eggs, which are cared for, and which yield males.

Other faculties have been developed or have appeared needful for communal safety and prosperity, and thus it has come about that the government of these emmet societies, as with bees, hornets, and wasps, is really a gynarchy, or government by females. Our worker ants are veritable Amazons. Not only does the entire domestic control and service of community fall to them, but also those more virile acts (according to human standards) of war and public discipline and defence. To the fact that the female temperament dominates affairs we may perhaps attribute many of the characteristics of public administration among social insects.

That there is a "female temperament," sharply distinguished from that of the male, in obvious enough to the student of emmet habits. That its dominance is advantageous to these organizations the natural history of the Hymenoptera attests.

What would be the effect upon human societies should similar conditions prevail among them? As a speculative theory it is worth discussing, and one would hardly err in thinking that our public and official affairs would be greatly bettered could woman's temperamental view of things have wider influence therein, especially in their relations to the young. Our civil governments and their administration, from the township to the national capital, are almost wholly products of the male element of the race.

The predominance of the female element, which one sees in ant communes, might not be desirable in our present stage of civilization, although it would be an interesting experiment in a county or even in a State. Such illustrations as the United States presents throw little light upon the problem, for the general conditions of society in the States that give woman the suffrage really differ little from those prevailing elsewhere. They certainly fall far short of the female status in an ant commune. One may safely think that a great deal more of it would be to our advantage. The fact to be especially noted is that among ants, as also among other insects, nature has built up upon the female organization, and not upon the male, the most remarkable and successful examples of social life and government known to natural science - the ant commune, the beehive, and the hornet's nest.

In the internal view of an ant commune's affairs the most striking facts are the relations of the queen mother. Her queenhood is wholly fanciful, except in the first stages of her independent career. Her motherhood is the great fact of life to her and her fellows. It is as a mother that she is the destined foundress of a new community. After her isolation or adoption into an established commune, which follows the marriage swarm, she begins to lay eggs which are developed into workers in due time.

If she goes solitary, her larger size and generous nurture have accumulated enough substance to supply food to the initial colony with little or no outside foraging, and this is imparted, after the manner of her kind, by regurgitation.

All the duties of nurture, nursing, washing, keeping up and keeping clean the premises, are wrought by her within her secluded and protected quarters until a little band of helpers has been reared around her. These at once begin to share labors with the queen mother. When they have passed their callow period, they break the original bounds and venture forth in search of food. Day by day the number of inhabitants increases; the formicary is enlarged by cutting out and building up new rooms and galleries; perhaps a new site may be chosen. A wider range of foraging is compelled by the needs of the growing community. The various labors, carried on at first by the queen, and afterward by the few pioneers, become more and more specialized, until at last are developed the vast and divided industries of a large and fully organized ant commune.

Meanwhile a remarkable change has befallen the queen mother. The workers, as their number grows, have taken on more and more the responsibility of labor and administration, until at last the whole burden thereof is lifted from the queen, and she is limited to the function of motherhood. She lays the eggs from which new citizens must be recruited, a service which increases in importance with the expansion of the community. Not only have the labors enlarged, but the wastage of life has greatly increased through accidents by flood and field, and perils of farther adventure into a world full of strange creatures who prey upon them, as do birds and divers beasts; and who war on them, as do sundry insects and ants of alien tribes.

Across their trails come cattle and men, whose ponderous feet crush. them unwittingly or carelessly. Every day has its list of casualties, very large at times. Every morning sees many who venture forth in quest of food supplies for dependents and home-workers, bounding with vigorous life and highly intent upon useful service, who never come back. When evening comes, at the gates of their loved city no watchful sentinels greet them. No eager nurses, or hungry antlings, or comrades weary with toiling on the works, shall lift up lips for sweet refection, the garnering of the day's adventure. Somewhere outside the city bounds, it may be near by, it may be afar, there has been a tragedy that no annals shall record and no ballad sing, but which robs community of a useful life, and cuts down a happy worker in the midst of a wholesome career. "Only one ant!" Yes, it is not much in the vast fecundity of nature, and is easily replaced. But it is an atom in the world's order that no human power can restore.

So, in the larger field of industry and research, our race has its daily tragedies, not wholly unlike these which befall the citizens of an ant hill. The martyrs of industry, heroes, and heroines; the fallen soldiers of the great army of labor, are thus going forth daily to perish in the path of duty. It is said that one out of every eight adult persons dying yearly in Pennsylvania dies a violent death. Not wholly, but too much, far too much, like the indifference of ant communities is the indifference of human society to these industrial tragedies. And the rational excuse of the ant is not for us, for nature has not made us that way. With us it is mainly wicked hardening of heart. How shall we cut down, if we may not wholly cut out, the long list of such wasted lives? Meanwhile, how shall we provide for the maimed, and for the dependents of the slain? Are not these soldiers of industry also worthy of communal care? "Breed more workers! " is the answer of the ants. The circle of their instinct has no wider swing. But at least they will make sure that the supply is sufficient, and the standard of wholesomeness and efficiency is kept up.

And so the queen mother must be encouraged to her utmost productivity, and every egg dropped must be preserved and reared with utmost care.' A peep within the city walls will show a rare condition. The whilom sole potentate who, first in solitary power, and then in maternal sovereignty, and next in undisputed matriarchate, held unchallenged authority and the exelusive right to labor, is seen in a large vaulted chamber in the heart of the galleried cone. She is not alone, but is surrounded by a circle of workers. Is she a prisoner?

In the work, Nature's Craftsmen, chaps, i and ii, readers will find a rather full and connected account of a queen ant's life - a sovereign deprived of queenhood, and in the hands of regicides? Not so bad as that! The offices of the guardians are at least friendly. They are a body-guard; in fact, the so-called "courtiers" of the ant queen - a phrase of courtesy, as is the word "queen," for the days of sovereignty are over, and these keepers of the sacred person are saying to her, in this decided way: "God did anoint you with His odorous oil To wrestle, not to reign!"

And here you may see a fair example of the sort of "wrestling" expected of her. She has paused in her march around the room. She raises her body well upon the hind pair of legs. See! From the oviduct beneath her abdomen she forces a minute, white, ovoid object which has no sooner dropped than one of the bodyguard rushes from the inner circle, seizes it in her jaws, and hurries therewith from the chamber. It is an egg - the norm of a future citizen! The process described will be repeated over and over again, many thousand times, until the ovaries are exhausted or death shall intervene.

It is to save these precious panicles of living matter for the community that this circle of watchers continually surrounds the queen mother's person. Theirs is a tribute to motherhood, not to queenhood. Certainly they have not reasoned it out, but instinctively they know that the prosperity, the very life, of the commonwealth depends upon the maintenance of that fecundity whose cessation would be "race suicide." Popular fancy has brought to the explanation of this ,'royal bodyguard" the familiar lines:

"There's such divinity doth hedge a king
That treason can but peep to what it would."

It will be seen, however, that this "hedge" about our ant queen amounts simply to a case of communal vigilance, represented by watchers set by the self-governing majesty of the commune to save all the ant eggs possible. Doubtless there is "divinity" in it, as there is in all honest discharge of duty and outworking of nature's laws. But anything like regard to sovereign state, or purpose to give or maintain royal honors, is wholly foreign from the situation. Reverence for motherhood is there, however - wholesome and protected motherhood, the essential fountain of communal virtue, vigor, and perpetuity. Are we losing from our own race the due reverence of that "divinity doth hedge about" maternity? Woe to the nations or peoples, be they ants or men, in such estate!

The bodyguard of an ant queen is an elastic ring that expands and contracts with her movements. If she move around the room they move with her. If she seek an adjoining apartment, the ring precedes, accompanies, pursues, but never breaks up. Sometimes the guard conceives that her maternal majesty needs special guidance, a very courtier-like and cabinet-like conception. Then one will see her bulky body gently solicited by a pull upon her sensitive antennae made by a workerminim, or a tug at a leg by a worker-minor, or a push or pinch upon the abdomen by a worker-major, A sort of volunteer steering committee are these; functionaries apparently needed, or at least present, in all organized governments, but coming as near to the vanishing point in ant cities as is conceivable.

Leaving the queen and her bodyguard, let us follow the fortune of the egg. From the queen mother it is carried into a separate room, presided over by attendants who have received the not inapt name of "nurses." There is nothing to distinguish them as a separate class. They are on duty at that point for reasons satisfactory to themselves and to the secret but all-sovereign Spirit of the Commune, whose mysterious sway a11 freely obey. It does not appear that there has developed a special class of workers with the charge of the communal young as their chief function. Nor are such duties assigned to the maimed, or to the toothless members, whose jaws have been worn down by age and by the gritty and stubborn material upon which they must labor. The nurses seem to be in the prime of anthood, vigorous and efficient.

It does appear, however, that the callow antlings, just out of their cocoon cases, are found among the nursing squads. They lose no time in taking up their life's work as helpful citizens - for which they enter imagohood full panoplied - but fall - to where opportunity first serves, and take care of their larval fellows. Until their shelly bodies become well indurated, they do not usually venture out-of-doors, but engage in tasks to which they are physically better adapted. This is a part of such education as they are to receive; for ants, like children, profit more by examples than by precept and criticism. The models of active public servitors are before them, and they simply do what all around them are doing. But the whole field of labor lies open to these prentices of the State, with no restrictions thereon.

The eggs soon develop into minute larvae, fragile and helpless things that need close and constant care to preserve them in life. Owing to the social conditions of their being, they do not have that sturdy hold on existence, and power to care for themselves that mark solitary larvae, or such as those of moths, that are gregarious in their larval or caterpillar stage. Thus from the beginning and throughout their growth - and they grow rapidly - they must be fed and cared for. Their care is always a first consideration. In the wreck of an ant city the workers may be seen to grasp the eggs and the young, and, careless of themselves, run to and fro, seeking places of refuge for their helpless charges. One will see them in little heaps, often graded according to size, scattered throughout the nurseries.

No observer has yet conclusively noted such treatment as prevails in beehives, where male and female eggs are separated from ordinary workers, and a queen can be developed from a worker larva by enlarged quarters and specially enriched food. The larvae of all ant castes and sexes seem to be kept in common and to receive like attention. The nurses continually hover over them. They lick them as a cat does her kittens. The larvae learn to perk up their wee black heads and open their mouths, into which the nurses place food and drink. They shift their positions from side to side, sometimes from room to room, sometimes with apparent good reason - often, one fancies, simply from the overflow and outgo of such maternal sentiment as leads a young mother to dandle and fondle her infant offspring, cooing the while her love-phrases or love-songs; a spectacle truly pleasing - to the observer at least, and doubtless often to the infant. Certainly herein the female temperament shows its supremacy.

Some readers who, like the author, have seen service in active military campaigns, know that male soldiers can be organized into a hospital corps for effective nursing of sick and wounded comrades. Many of us carry remembrances of how bravely and well, with what devotion and fidelity, this duty has often been done. Here and there, too, men have developed special qualities that have made them pre-eminent in the delicate and difficult service.

But what veteran, who has had the opportunity to observe, has not noticed the vast change that the entrance of trained female nurses has brought into the field? There are deftness and sympathy and tenderness - a something indescribable, but most potent, which women bring with them and which men have not-that work a transformation in scenes where human dependents are to be ministered to. These qualities are the fruitage of the female temperament. They spring out of physical organism, which so largely influences habits.

So, too, we all have known men whose love of children has been strong as death, and has made them good and careful nurses in an emergency, and for a limited period. But that man is indeed a rarity who is a proficient in the care of immature infants. Men may dandle young babes with delight and even success for a while. But the tact, patience, enduring fondness, and instinctive knowledge of the real natural nurse of infants are endowments of the female temperament alone.

It is certainly so among ants. The males are simply nonentities in the care of the commune's dependents. They are themselves dependents of the most absolute sort: Nature has denied them the gifts requisite for effective service. To one vho knows them well, and their temperament and ways, it would never occur to think of them as caretakers for the nurslings of the commune. And this judgment is not affected by the occasional and very rare instances in - which male ants have been seen to make some slight and awkward approaches toward a seeming part in the ordinary worker's duty.

For the most part; nurse ants take up and go through their duties in a business-like spirit and way. It is done thoroughly, and -does not cease until the larvae have spun up around them their silken pupa-cases. Nor then; for these cocoons are constantly watched, cleansed and cared for, and when the time comes for the young imago to escape, it is aided by the scissors-like jaws of the nurses, whose obstetrical services are aided by the efforts of the outcoming nymph.

Did Lycurgus get from the ants among his Spartan hills a first suggestion of his theory that children are a communal possession, to be reared at the charge and with the oversight of the State from the earliest age practicable? Certainly, our American Republic is well impregnated with the germ of that theory. Its essential spirit largely controls the subject of education. True, we have not yet reached the high stage of ant government, in which the whole aim and activities of the commonwealth pivot upon and move around the rearing and care of the young. But, at least, it is a ruling theory of our people that organized society owes every child a common-school education. At a tender age our children are separated from their homes for a part of the day, and placed by the State - by legal compulsion, if need be -where they get training and instruction without regard of social distinctions.

Herein is the common meeting-ground of all classes at the most impressionable period of life, and the maintenance of the true democracy of our republic depends largely upon that fact. We carry the principle so far that we not only provide school-houses, teachers, school apparatus, fuel, light, and janitor service, but we supply text-books for the scholars. In many sections their car fare to and from school is paid; or, as in a district school hard by the writer's country home, a big omnibus goes the rounds o' mornings and gathers up the pupils, and again at evening calls for and distributes them to their homes. We dare not have it otherwise.

Government must continue to be responsible for the education of its young citizens. For, however willing, individual families are not able to do this unaided by the State. Even the wealthy must submit to something like the same law. Said a multi-millionaire to the writer: "We shall go to Southern Italy to spend the winter. We might as well close our house. Tomorrow our son goes to (naming a college for men), and our daughter returns from Europe to go to (naming a college for women). Our only other child is married. Our home will be empty. We will go abroad." Thus the wealthy parent is not exempt from the necessity of committing his children to society to educate and train for future citizenship.

So it is in all higher education - classical, scientific, mechanical, professional, military, and naval. Organized society becomes, and must become, a nursing mother to the youth from whom, for the most part, her future rulers and most useful servants must come. As for the young waifs of society - the flotsam and jetsam of child-life, continually tossed amid the wreckage of the world's great social sea-long since government has seen, and sees it more and more, that they are in an especial sense the children of the State, and must be adopted and trained into citizenship by the State.

Thus far, at least, our commonwealths are swayed by theories and have taken up practices long ago prevalent in ant communes.
Unhappily, our system breaks down where that of the ants proves splendidly effective: by our absence of system in providing work for young citizens as soon as their working powers are mature. In the ant commune every individual passes at once from pupahood to the status of a laborer. In a human community the citizen's work, in both fact and form, is left chiefly at haphazard. It must, indeed, be that with us, as with hymenopters, the Spirit of the Commune has some subtle potency in directing unconscious youth to the choice of occupations and keeping the working mass in activity. But the State as a State eschews the matter, and there is no sense of communal responsibility that every citizen has.