Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 14, 2025
We have to go far down the scale for any instance of organized motherhood, but we do find it in the hymenoptera; in the overflowing industry, prosperity, peace and loving service of the ant-hill and bee-hive. These are the most highly socialized types of life, next to ours, and they are feminine types.
Can it not be contended that such insects are able to determine by reasoning powers which is the best way of doing a thing, and that their actions are guided by thought and reflection? The Hymenoptera and the Mammalia both make their first appearance early in the secondary period, and it is not until the commencement of the tertiary epoch that ants and monkeys appear upon the scene.
It is not purely accidental, although accident has a large place in it; and it does not depend solely on the initiative of individuals, although individuals collaborate in it. Compare the different forms of the same instinct in different species of hymenoptera. The impression derived is not always that of an increasing complexity made of elements that have been added together one after the other.
It displays wrinkles and seams, due to the different courses of mortar, or else knotty protuberances distributed almost concentrically. Both Hymenoptera accumulate caterpillars in their coffers, whether domes or jars. Let us give an abstract of the bill of fare.
All that we can do now is to enter this veiled region of supposition, and, discarding all positive statement, attempt to follow a tribe of hymenoptera in their progress towards a more intelligent existence, towards a little more security and comfort, lightly indicating the salient features of this ascension that is spread over many thousands of years.
The same number of joints in the tarsi is a character generally common to very large groups of beetles, but in the Engidae, as Westwood has remarked, the number varies greatly; and the number likewise differs in the two sexes of the same species: again in fossorial hymenoptera, the manner of neuration of the wings is a character of the highest importance, because common to large groups; but in certain genera the neuration differs in the different species, and likewise in the two sexes of the same species.
Amongst the ants of Central America I place the Eciton as the first in intelligence, and as such at the head of the Articulata. Wasps and bees come next to ants, and then others of the Hymenoptera. Between ants and the lower forms of insects there is a greater difference in reasoning powers than there is between man and the lowest mammalian.
In the sting which they give to the nerve-centres of their victim, in order to destroy its power of moving without killing it, these different species of hymenoptera take into account, so to speak, the different species of prey they respectively attack.
I am far from denying that the Philanthus has honest methods of earning its living; I see it among the flowers, no less assiduous than the rest of the Hymenoptera, peacefully drinking from their cups of nectar. The male, indeed, being stingless, knows no other means of supporting himself. The mothers, without neglecting the flowers as a general thing, live by brigandage as well.
Proposed improvement of the river. Progress of the delta. Mosquitoes. Disagreeable night. Fine morning. Vegetation of the banks. Seripiqui river. Mot-mots. Foraging ants: their method of hunting. Ant-thrushes. They attack the nests of other ants. Birds' nests, how preserved from them. Reasoning powers in ants. Parallel between the Mammalia and the Hymenoptera. Utopia.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking