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Updated: May 2, 2025
They felt some unearthly presence had been removed from their midst. General Claviger turned to Monteith. "That's a curious sort of chap," he said slowly, in his military way. "Who is he, and where does he come from?" "Ah, where does he come from? that's just the question," Monteith answered, lighting a cigar, and puffing away dubiously. "Nobody knows. He's a mystery. He poses in the role.
But a foresight still greater and nearer to his is manifested by those ants who breed and keep near them animals of different species, not for the sake of their flesh, but for certain secretions, just as man utilises the milk of the cow or the goat. Ants have true domestic animals belonging to a variety of species, but the most widely spread are the Claviger and the Aphides or plant-lice.
These facts have long since been carefully studied and leave no room for doubt. The Claviger testaceus is a small beetle, often met in the dwellings of ants. Nature has not been very generous on its behalf. It is blind, and its eyes are indeed altogether atrophied. The elytra are soldered at the median edge, so that it cannot spread its wings to fly.
Some of the beetles and woodlice which ants domesticate in their nests have been kept underground so long that they have become quite blind that is to say, have ceased altogether to produce eyes, which would be of no use to them in their subterranean galleries; and one such blind beetle, known as Claviger, has even lost the power of feeding itself, and has to be fed by its masters from their own mandibles.
These insects are in fact cared for by their masters, who feed them by disgorging into their mouths the sweet liquids they have gathered here and there. If a nest is disturbed the ants hasten to carry their eggs and larvæ out of danger; they display the same solicitude with regard to the Claviger, and carefully bear them to the depth of their galleries.
W. J. Müller, "Beiträge zur Naturgeschichte der Gattung Claviger," Germer u. Zincken's Magaz. d. Entomol., iii., 1881, pp. 69-112. There is little doubt, however, that some species of Aphides and allied Coccidæ would be liable to extermination if not protected by their ant masters. See, for instance, Forel, Bull. Soc. Vaud., 1876. Mr.
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