Ant Facts

When the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia last week presented its Leidy Medal to Dr. William Morton Wheeler, internationally famed zoologist, longtime Dean of the Bussey Institution for Research in Applied Biology at Harvard, he replied with a lecture on the subject in which he had been doing medal-worthy work: ants and their queens. Some of his more curious ant facts:

There is an ant queen who has a pocket in her head and combs on her feet. After her travels through dirt, she combs her body for earth with which to grow a garden of fungus in her pocket. When she has found a crevice in which to set up housekeeping, she deposits the garden beside her, fertilizes it by breaking some of her own eggs. When the rest of the eggs hatch into worker-ants, they assume the task of tending the garden.

There is an ant queen of another species who, contemplating a nuptial flight, assembles a horde of worker-ants around her, carries them around on her strong legs to care for the children when they shall be born. The children are so numerous and tiny she cannot tend them herself.

A third type of ant has golden hair. On the golden hair is a substance agreeable to worker ants. Therefore the golden-haired queen may invade a brunette queen's province at will; the workers will flock to the invader; ants prefer blondes.

A fourth type of ant queen is subject to rapacious attacks from the workers of a family that is no kin. Like an army they attack the citadel, penetrate to the queen's chambers, seize her. For 45 days, more or less, they are engaged in sawing off her head. When that is accomplished, they install their own queen over the subjugated ant city.

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