Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 1, 2025
Belt has also made some extremely interesting observations on the Ecitons, whom for intelligence he places first among the ants of Central America, and as such at the head of the Articulata. See Naturalist in Nicaragua, 1888, pp. 17-29. Expeditions to acquire slaves. In order to reduce one's own species to slavery, it seems at first that an intelligence is required as developed as that of Man.
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.
There is not, however, a distinct separation of classes, individuals existing which connect together the two extremes. These Ecitons are seen in the pathways of the forest at all places on the banks of the Amazons, travelling in dense columns of countless thousands.
The eyes in the Ecitons are very small, in some of the species imperfect, and in others entirely absent; in this they differ greatly from those ants which hunt singly, and which have the eyes greatly developed. The imperfection of eyesight in the Ecitons is an advantage to the community, and to their particular mode of hunting.
I had no difficulty in tracing the line to the spot from which they were conveying their booty: this was a low thicket; the Ecitons were moving rapidly about a heap of dead leaves; but as the short tropical twilight was deepening rapidly, and I had no wish to be benighted on the lonely campos, I deferred further examination until the next day.
The moving columns of Ecitons are composed almost entirely of workers of different sizes, but at intervals of two or three yards there are larger and lighter-coloured individuals that will often stop, and sometimes run a little backward, halting and touching some of the ants with their antennae. They look like officers giving orders and directing the march of the column.
The wasps could guard against optical discovery, but the blind Ecitons had senses which transcended vision, if not even scent. Late that night, our lanterns showed the remnants of the Eciton army wandering aimlessly about, making near approach impossible, but apparently lacking any definite concerted action.
But it is especially the various tribes of wingless insects that have cause for fear, such as heavy-bodied spiders, ants of other species, maggots, caterpillars, larvae of cockroaches and so forth, all of which live under fallen leaves, or in decaying wood. The Ecitons do not mount very high on trees, and therefore the nestlings of birds are not much incommoded by them.
There are, however, several species of foraging ants, called ecitons, which move in vast bodies through the forest in search of prey. They are carnivorous, and attack not only insects and grubs of all sorts, but even other ants, assaulting their citadels and carrying off the slaughtered inhabitants.
A third ant, however a species of Hypoclinea which I have mentioned before as a cowardly species, whose nests were despoiled by the Ecitons, frequented all the trees, and whenever it found any young hoppers unattended, it would relieve them of their honey, but would scamper away on the approach of any of the Pheidole.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking