Page 133 - Devotion Among Animals Revealing the Work of God

Cooperation and Solidarity Among Animals

are the natural outcome of the mutual aid which they practise at
every stage of their busy and laborious lives. 132
This next section will deal with examples of devotion and coop-
eration observed in ant colonies and beehives.

Selfless Devotion in Ant Colonies
1. One striking aspects of colony life is that all ants share food.

If two ants from the same colony meet, one hungry and the other
with a belly full of digested or semi-digested food, the hungry ant
will ask the other one to share some. This kind of request is never
turned down. Ants also feed their larvae from the food in their stom-
achs and often, end up keeping less for themselves than what they
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offer to others.
2. In ant colonies, there is perfect sharing of tasks, and each ant
fulfills its responsibility with great devotion. The responsibility of
the "soldier ant" is to guard the entrance to the nest. It will admit
only ants belonging to its colony and refuse entrance to all others.
The heads of these guard ants serve as a living "gate" to the nest.
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They guard the entrance all day and never leaving it unattended.
In the case of an attack, these ants form the first line of defense.
3. Along with sharing food, ants will also share, with as many
other ants they can, information about the location of food sources.
In their behavior, there is no sign of selfish struggle. The ant who dis-
covers a new source of food eats her fill and then returns to the nest,
leaving behind a chemical trail on the way by touching her lower ab-
domen to the ground at regular intervals. Also, she goes around the
nest three to six times, speedily communicating the news to the other
ants and on returning to the source of food, is accompanied by many
others.
4. Medium-sized workers in a colony of leaf-cutting ants spend
their whole day transporting leaves. During this time, they are ex-

posed and highly vulnerable to attacks, especially from a species of

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