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Updated: June 11, 2025
The desperation of total exhaustion had accomplished what necessity and opportunity and normal life could not. Several others followed his scent instead of that leading back toward the outhouse, and as an amoeba gradually flows into one of its own pseudopodia, so the forlorn hope of the great Eciton army passed slowly down the beach and on into the jungle.
I one day saw a column of Eciton hamata running along the foot of a nearly perpendicular tramway cutting, the side of which was about six feet high. At one point I noticed a sort of assembly of about a dozen individuals that appeared in consultation. Suddenly one ant left the conclave, and ran with great speed up the perpendicular face of the cutting without stopping.
It is probable that these hours of relaxation and cleaning may be indispensable to the effective performance of their harder labours, but while looking at them, the conclusion that the ants were engaged merely in play was irresistible. Eciton praedator. This is a small dark-reddish species, very similar to the common red stinging-ant of England.
This species is often met with in the forest, not in quest of one particular form of prey, but hunting, like Eciton predator, only spread out over a much greater space of ground. Crickets, grasshoppers, scorpions, centipedes, wood-lice, cockroaches, and spiders are driven out from below the fallen leaves and branches.
An eyeless species, the Eciton erratica, rapidly forms covered passages under which to advance, and shows great skill in fitting the keystone to these convex arcades. Belt points out that blindness is an advantage in the particular mode of hunting adopted by these ants, enabling them to keep together. Those species of Eciton which hunt singly have very well developed eyes.
Next in order comes the Eciton vastator, which has no eyes, although the collapsed sockets are plainly visible; and, lastly, the Eciton erratica, in which both sockets and eyes have disappeared, leaving only a faint ring to mark the place where they are usually situated.
All this marvelous merging with leaf tones went for naught when once an advance Eciton scout located the nest.
The margins of the phalanx spread out at times like a cloud of skirmishers from the flanks of an army. I was never able to find the hive of this species. Blind Ecitons. I will now give a short account of the blind species of Eciton. Connecting them with the utterly blind species of the genus, is a very stout-limbed Eciton, the E. crassicornis, whose eyes are sunk in rather deep sockets.
Now and then, however, a needle-like nip at the back of my neck, showed that some pioneer of these shock troops had broken through, when I was thankful that Attas could only bite and not sting as well. At such a time as this, the greatest difference is apparent between these and the Eciton army ants.
The Eciton soldier with his long, curved scimitars and his swift, nervous movements, was to one of these great insects as a fighting d'Artagnan would be to an armored tank. The results were much the same however, perfect efficiency. I now dug swiftly and crashed with pick down through three feet of soil.
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