Word: ante
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Entomologists are forever disagreeing about ants. Some insist that the ant is brainier and better organized than man; others regard the ant as a slothful, inconsistent dimwit which gets along solely on a few inherited habits. John (The Life of the Spider) Crompton, a British expert, strikes a sprightly middle course. In a new book, Ways of the Ant (Houghton Mifflin; $3.50), he declares that ants, banded together in communities, have evolved emotions, "discipline and intelligence of a high order," even though the individual ant may be a nincompoop compared to a go-it-alone housefly. Some of Author Crompton...
...force of sanguin ants raided a nearby negro ant city, killed its defenders, returned home laden with captured cocoons (future slaves). But shortly afterward, the entire sanguin population came pouring out of their own nest, carrying not only the captured negro cocoons but their own cocoons as well, plus all their food, eggs, and their queen. They headed straight for the desolate negro city and made it their own. Author Crompton believes that "more or less mental processes must have taken place": i.e., even in the heat of battle, the sanguin warriors noticed that the enemy city was better than...
Animals have been artists for millions of years, says Lancaster, although "their theories remain sealed in [their] little minds." The spider, for example, "is a marvelous craftsman . . . The common orb web is a triumph of symmetry and artistry." Then there is the ant, a master organizer, engineer and architect, and the termite, whose elaborate constructions make use of "scientific exposures to light and air, air ducts and airconditioning, concrete walls, roofs and gutters for shedding rain...
...medieval constitutional history. Another is trying to make some "connections between psychoanalytic theory, existentionalism, and currents in modern theological thought." An archeologist in the Near East, interested in Iranian archeology, is anxiously watching that country's political situation, while biologists are contemplating the morphology of ferns, or gathering ants for study in the methods of social and organic evolution. The ant biologist has already a remarkable number of specimens, but, unsatisfied, he is thinking of a trip to New Guinea to help round out the collection...
...Ant paste containing arsenic, "attractive to ants and children alike...