Abstract
IT may not be new to observers of animal life, but I have been much interested in watching the common house ant here. We have an American fly-trap: the sugar was one day covered with ants, so I placed the trap on a finger-bowl standing in a plate of water. The ants, when they came to the edge of the Water, ran round the bowl until convinced there was no way across, and then calmly “took to the water”, and ran across it by aid of surface tension without getting their feet wet. Having presumably been home to the nest, they returned for more sugar, crossing in the same way, and this went on regularly, a steady procession crossing the water.
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WILLIS, J. The Crossing of Water by Ants. Nature 91, 425 (1913). https://doi.org/10.1038/091425b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/091425b0
