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Updated: May 28, 2025
Not only, moreover, do the ants protect the Aphides themselves, but collect their eggs in autumn, and tend them carefully through the winter, ready for the next spring. Many other insects are also domesticated by ants, and some of them, from living constantly underground, have completely lost their eyes and become quite blind.
Instincts comparable with habits, but different in their origin Instincts graduated Aphides and ants Instincts variable Domestic instincts, their origin Natural instincts of the cuckoo, molothrus, ostrich, and parasitic bees Slave-making ants Hive-bee, its cell-making instinct Changes of instinct and structure not necessarily simultaneous Difficulties of the theory of the Natural Selection of instincts Neuter or sterile insects Summary.
"Recherches sur quelques Coleoptères aveugles," Ann. Sc. Nat., v. Série, t. ix., 1868, p. 71. Aphis-pens and paddocks. Ants can also keep Aphides in their homes. In this case, fearing that the adult beasts may not be able to adopt a change of surroundings and food, they bring the eggs to their nests and care for them at the same time as their own children.
I was struck with this, because I remembered Mr. Darwin's inability to make the aphides yield their secretion after many experiments. A large number of hornets were flying about the tree, but seemed afraid of the ants; for when they attempted to alight, an ant would at once rush to the spot, and the hornet would get out of its way."
Their wonderful nests, their buildings, superior in relative size to those of man; their paved roads and overground vaulted galleries; their spacious halls and granaries; their corn-fields, harvesting and "malting" of grain; their, rational methods of nursing their eggs and larvae, and of building special nests for rearing the aphides whom Linnaeus so picturesquely described as "the cows of the ants"; and, finally, their courage, pluck, and, superior intelligence all these are the natural outcome of the mutual aid which they practise at every stage of their busy and laborious lives.
Doubting souls, great companies of them, even now were being loosed upon their mystic journey. Man slew man, beast slew beast, and insect devoured insect. The tiny red beetle that he had placed upon the rose bush existed only by the death of the aphides which were its prey; the spider, too, preyed. But man was the master slayer.
These little animals, during a very considerable part of their existence, multiply themselves by means of a kind of internal budding, the buds being developed into essentially non-sexual animals, which are neither male nor female; they become converted into young Aphides, which repeat the process, and their offspring after them, and so on again; you may go on for nine or ten, or even twenty or more successions; and there is no very good reason to say how soon it might terminate, or how long it might not go on if the proper conditions of warmth and nourishment were kept up.
Cultivate, feed, prune, spray, dig bores, fight mice, rabbits, aphides, and the thousand other enemies to trees and fruit, and do these things all the time and then keep on doing them, and you will win out. Omit all or any of them, and the chances are that you will fail of big returns. But orcharding is not unique in this.
Even the quite young aphides behaved in this manner, showing that the action was instinctive, and not the result of experience. But as the excretion is extremely viscid, it is probably a convenience to the aphides to have it removed; and therefore probably the aphides do not instinctively excrete for the sole good of the ants.
According to Huber, who had ample opportunities for observation, in Switzerland the slaves habitually work with their masters in making the nest, and they alone open and close the doors in the morning and evening; and, as Huber expressly states, their principal office is to search for aphides.
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