The Ants’ Habits
Among the many mistakes prevalent in regard to the habits of animals and insects is the notion that ants in general gather food in harvest for a winter’s store. This is quite an error; in the first place, they do not live on grain, but chiefly on animal food; and in the next place, they are torpid in winter and do not require food. There is in Poonah a grain-feeding species which stores up millet seed, but certainly our ants have no claim to Jane Taylor’s stanza,—
“Who taught the little ant the way
Its narrow hole to bore,
And labor all the summer day
To gather winter store?”