NOT SO WISE

Evening Post, Volume CXXV, Issue 22, 27 January 1938, Page 15

NOT SO WISE

FACTS ABOUT THE ANT

WONDERS OF THE DEEP

(From "The Post's" Representative.)

LONDON, January 5,

The myth of the wise and clever ant was exploded by Dr. Julian Huxley, president of the Royal Zoological Society, in a lecture to children at the Royal Institution recently. Actually, he said, the ant was rather stupid.

It allowed a certain type of butterfly to come to the nest and eat its grubs simply because the ant in turn liked eating a sticky substance which the butterfly provided. "It is as if a nurserymaid were to allow.a wolf ip carry off the baby from her perambulator in return for a nip of gin," he said. .

Andther proof that the,, ant was not so bright as was claimed was that the little domestic animals which worked for. it in the ant hills quite easily deceived it into' thinking that they too were ants, who"must be given iood. Dr. Huxley told his youthful audience of some of the wonders of the deep sea and described, how several of the most important scientific discoveries about, this inaccessible part of the globe were due to blind chance. One of the most romantic incidents in the history of, zoology was the discovery by the Prince of.-Monaco, . a keen amateur scientist, of some of the rare forms ■ of. deep-sea cuttle fish which were inaccessible under normal circumstances and which had never been seen alive.

The Prince was on a yachting cruise in whaling waters when he came across a whale which was dying after being harpooned. The creature dived under his yacht and disgorged the contents of its stomach, which included a number of almost complete specimens of cuttle nsh with, enormous beaks. Two of them were of a type so completely new to science that they were put into a new genera. •-.;

The rarest specimen of a hydra was found not long ago by a scientist while walking along a beach in New Zealand, he said. He picked up a small object like a gooseberry and' later found that it was a hydra which floated upside down. It was the only known specimen of its kind. It had tentacles and trie body was filled with gas. ■t ■■ ■ . .- ~