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Updated: May 17, 2025
So obvious is this plan for converting ants into animated honey-jars, that several different kinds of ants in different parts of the world, belonging to the most widely distinct families, have independently hit upon the very self-same device. Besides the Mexican species, there is a totally different Australian honey-ant, and another equally separate in Borneo and Singapore.
They have, in fact, realised in everyday life the awful fate of Mr. Gilbert's discontented sugar-broker, who laid on flesh and 'adipose deposit' until he became converted at last into a perfect rolling ball of globular humanity. The manners of the honey-ant race are very simple.
The honey-ant is a greedy individual who has nevertheless nobly devoted himself for the good of the community by converting himself into a living honey-jar, from which all the other ants in his own nest may help themselves freely from time to time, as occasion demands.
The curious insect which thus serves as an animated sweetmeat for the Mexican children is the honey-ant of the Garden of the Gods; and it affords a beautiful example of Mandeville's charming paradox that personal vices are public benefits vitia privata humana commoda.
One more example of these rites may be cited, in order to bring out the earnestness of this type of religion, which is concerned with doing, instead of mere not-doing. There is none of the Toda perfunctoriness here. It will be enough to glance at the commencement of the ritual of the honey-ant totemites.
This may seem at first sight rather an unpleasant practice on the part of the ants; but after all, how does it really differ from our own habit of eating honey which has been treated in very much the same unsophisticated manner by the domestic bee? Worse things than these, however, Dr. McCook records to the discredit of the Colorado honey-ant.
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