Since the image of Verrill in this newspaper article was so bad I have added a couple of images from our archives. A link to the Science Fiction story, 'World of the Giant Ants' follows./drf
Ants
Have Beauty Doctors
Daily Boston Globe; Apr 11, 1937; researched by Alan Schenker,
digitized by Doug Frizzle, Dec. 2011
Intelligent Insects Keep
Pets and Capture Slaves in Raids—Hyatt Verrill Tells of Man-Eating Ants He
Escaped in Costa Rica—One Ant's Daily Work Equal To a Man Walking to San
Francisco
"Sit-down strikes?"
"A sit-down strike would
never be countenanced in the ant
world! 'No work, no life' is the ant
motto, and a sit-downer would unquestionably be dealt with most summarily.
"I
doubt if they even have festivals or recreations, for their lives consist wholly of toiling, eating and
sleeping. In fact, I should judge that an ant's life is about as monotonous and
as machine-like and ordered as ours would be if the
N. R. A. had continued for a few decades."
With a twinkle in his eye, A.
Hyatt Verrill of Springfield,
author of "Strange Insects and Their Stories," paused to tell of his
adventures with ants in a score of countries. And when he speaks on ants, mark
his words! He has been around!
Much Like Humans
"I do know that ants
have feasts or banquets, that their
form of government is thoroughly communistic,
and that for some reason, whether because of strikes, mutiny or pure
disobedience, certain individuals are punished and executed," he said.
"It is quite probable
that had the ants developed to man's
size instead of remaining tiny insects, they
would have developed a far greater degree of intelligence than human beings and
would have far outstripped mankind in civilization and would have completely dominated
the earth."
Human beings, then, should not pat themselves
on the back and pride themselves on their
civilization.
"Ants resemble man in
many habits. There are ant masons, miners, carpenters, farmers, soldiers,
police, doctors, servants, slaves, nurses, undertakers and sanitary officers; there are ant hospitals, cemeteries, playgrounds and
nurseries, and no human babies are more carefully reared than the young of most ants," the
naturalist pointed out.
"Although few persons
are aware of it, nearly every important industry, as well as many human
characteristics and habits, are common
among the ants," Mr. Verrill
recalled.
"Every ant carries a comb about with it, and never think of starting the day's work without first washing himself and making
himself spic and span.
Take Entertainers Along
"Moreover, ants have
beauty specialists and masseurs. When some
weary ant stretches out and is smoothed,
rubbed, parted and massaged by another
ant it exhibits every symptom of
enjoying the process as much as does
a human athlete after a strenuous field day."
Mr. Verrill paused to light
his pipe.
"You know, it is almost
impossible to conceive the amount of
strenuous labor which ants perform day after day. Very often their loads weigh twice or four times as much as their own bodies, and not infrequently the tree or bush whence the
leaves are cut is a mile or more from
the nest. Why the
ants should travel such a vast distance, equivalent to over 120 miles to a man,
in order to secure leaves when there
are trees of the same species within
easy reach of the nest remains a
mystery.
"In the course of a day I have seen ants which made
scores of trips back and forth between nest and tree and tree and nest. On their journey for leaves these
ants are often accompanied by
strange midgets who are incapable of cutting leaves and are apparently mere
entertainers."
"Entertainers!"
"Yes, indeed! These are
weak creatures and are often carried to the
nests on the backs of workers.'
Blind Cockroach Pets
Speaking of entertainers, the ants have domestic
pets, just as we human beings have dogs and cats. The leaf-cutting ants keep
blind cockroaches as pets, and so fond of these
creatures are the ants that when a
queen departs to form a new colony she usually carries a baby cockroach with
her. In return for the loving care
bestowed upon them by the ants, the
cockroaches act as masseurs and also lick the
sap of the leaves from their
masters' bodies.
Crickets and beetle larvae
are also kept as pets, Mr Verrill pointed out. "So fond of these beetle pets are the
ants that they feed and care for them, carry them
to the outer air on fine days and
take them inside if it rains, and
spend a great deal of their time
fondling and stroking their odd
pets."
How many miles does an ant
travel daily? Have you ever wondered? Then let the
distinguished naturalist give you the
low-down, as it were:
"Each ant travels in a
day a distance which, in proportion to the
insect's size, would be equal to nearly 3000 miles! Imagine a human being
walking from New
York to San Francisco one day and
back to New York
the next, for day after day, week
after week, and carrying a load of two to three hundred pounds on each eastward
hike, merely to secure material for a mushroom
bed to supply food for his family and his friends. Yet that is his sole object
of labor."
Some Can't Feed
Themselves
Of course, some ants just won't work and that's where the unemployment problem comes
in. Some ants take life easy and are
so wholly dependent upon their
slaves that they are unable to feed themselves, and if placed in a jar with sugar they will starve. But if a black slave is placed
with them he will at once begin
feeding his masters.
"Oddly enough," Mr.
Verrill declares, "the ants'
slaves are always black ants and the
masters are red ants. Red ants often raid the
nests of black ants and carry off the
young. Some of the most interesting battles occur when the black ants mass themselves
in army array for a battle with their
attackers.
“No quarter is shown, the wounded are promptly
put to death and often devoured, and the
victorious black warriors are left unmolested for a time. But usually it is the other
way around." Mr Verrill's fascinating book on insects and their stories, published recently by L. C. Page
& Co. is
replete with stories on ants and their
work. He also is the author of
"Strange Sea Shells and Their Stories" and "My Jungle
Trails" published by the same company.
"I have stood within a
dozen feet of a vast army of ants, an army so immense that the rustling of their
moving bodies and the sound of their jaws could be heard a hundred yards
away," he relates. "So numerous and so voracious are these big ants that horses and cattle are overpowered
and devoured, and there are many
cases of human beings having fallen victims to the
army ants."
10,000 Red Hot Needles
In his newest book, "My
Jungle Trails," to be out this month, Mr Verrill tells of stepping into an
ant colony while collecting natural history specimens in Costa Rica.
"Never dreaming of any
danger, I jumped from the log, and the
next instant fairly howled. I felt as if I had sprung into a pot of boiling
lead with 10,000 red-hot needles searing the
flesh of my ankles and legs. Yelling with pain, I glanced down to find my legs
almost hidden beneath a moving black mass, while between the
branches and trash underfoot the
ground appeared to heave, move and undulate. Instantly I realized what had
happened. I had jumped into a column of army ants!"
Son of the
late Prof Addison E. Verrill, noted zoologist, Mr Verrill is one of the nation's foremost authorities on nature
subjects. A graduate of Yale, he has illustrated the
natural history portions of Webster's International Dictionary, and has
conducted scientific expeditions in Bermuda, the
West Indies, Guiana, Central America and Panama.
He has studied insects and plant;
life in Costa Rica, Mexico, Yucatan, Panama, Columbia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia,
Chile, Tierra del Fuego, the
Falkland Islands, Brazil, Uruguay, the
Azores, Cape Verde Islands and all the
islands of the Caribbean. Besides,
he has made extensive studies in Europe and has crossed the
Atlantic 12 times.
Tramping about these countries gave Mr Verrill plenty of
hair-raising adventures. Often he was in grave danger.
"On one occasion, for
example, while spending the night in
a shack on the mountainside of Costa Rica,
the hut was visited by an army of
ants while my companions and I
slept. And it was only by good fortune that we ever saw the
light of day again!
Escaped Man-Eaters
"It was this way,"
he began. "We were sleeping in hammocks and ants will not travel over a
rough hair rope. Except for ourselves, every other
living thing within the house was
utterly destroyed. Not a roach, fly, moth or termite remained, and a good-sized
tapir, which we had killed in the
afternoon and had hung up outside the
hut, was completely devoured. Only the bones and the
rugged hide remained to tell the
ants' visit as silently as they had
come they
had vanished.
"I shudder to think of
what out fate would have been had we been sleeping in cots instead."
Mr Verrill, whose works have
enjoyed a wide popularity, is the
author of more than 90 books. In 1920 he made ethnological and archaeological
explorations in Panama.
Four years later he discovered the
remains of previously unknown prehistoric culture in Panama. Then he was engaged in
making a series of oil paintings of South and Central American Indians from life.
Mr Verrill led archaeological
and ethnological expeditions in Peru,
Bolivia and Chile and in 1933 led an expedition to salvage a
Spanish galleon sunk in the West Indies in the
17th century.
An honorary chief of the Carib Indians of Guiana and the Guaymi tribe of Panama, he speaks several Indian
dialects.
He is at home in any city or town of Latin
America,
for he has spent some time in almost
every South .and Central American republic. For several years he conducted the popular science department of the American Boy Magazine. His latest are being
published by the Page Company in Boston.
How does he explain some of the
amazing things that ants do? Are ants guided by instinct or reason?
"That," he laughed,
"is a question on which scientists disagree. Personally, I think they reason, for I cannot explain many of their actions by pure instinct."
No comments:
Post a Comment