Читать книгу Intelligence in Plants and Animals онлайн

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Now, as ants are endowed with a high degree of intelligence, considering the position they occupy in the grand scale of created existences, they would soon perceive that their highest good would be attained by taking under their protection the little creatures which are the authors of this excretion. From this time the ants would begin to abandon their sanguinary propensities and manifest some regard for the aphides. The latter, in return, perceiving the former’s friendly disposition, would cease to fear them, and learn to cater to their wants. Thus would be developed, in time, those amicable relations which subsist between the two great, yet widely differentiated, families.

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While much has been written upon the social relations subsisting between ants and aphides, yet the subject never grows uninteresting or threadbare. New facts are brought to light as observations widen and extend, some tending to confirm, and others to subvert old notions.

That aphides excrete a sweet, viscid, honey-like fluid, which affords food for many species of ants, has been long known to naturalists. Any one can convince himself of this truth if he will but put himself to the trouble of examining the leaves or branchlets of any plant at the proper season of the year. Scattered upon the foliage and tender twigs thereof will be found millions of aphides, and close beside them countless ants, that ever and anon will be seen to caress, by means of their antennæ, the little creatures for the sweets within their bodies. It has even been asserted that some species of ants keep aphides as human beings do cows, but this by the many has been doubted, or deemed imaginary.