Maybe a slightly
different compound is reserved for vegetable substances, which can offer
only a flabby sort of remonstrance. If this theory be supported on
investigation, surely the green tree-ant will deserve to be catalogued
among creatures who have solved labour-saving problems--who employ
consciousness, if not rational thought, to compensate for physical
frailty. This theory is applicable to the manipulation of a single leaf
only, and of a leaf of considerable size. Yet these feeble folk more
frequently take up their quarters in trees bearing small leaves, of
which scores are embodied in a mansion. Immense and concentrated
exertion is necessary to draw far-flung branchlets and leaves together,
and the feverish host accomplishes a seemingly impossible feat by an
organised combination of engineering with co-operative labour. Spaces
between leaves and twigs four and five inches wide are bridged by chains
of ants--each individual clasping with its mandibles above the abdominal
segment its immediate companion; occasionally the ant grips its fellow
by the posterior legs, and is so held by the next in order. In the
construction of these chains ants hastily mass at each side of the gulf
to be spanned, and crawling, or rather running over each other, form
pendant strands, each ant a living link.
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