Read carefully the passage given below and answer the questions that follow:
A great German,
named Bismarck, once said that if he had to live a second life in this world,
and told that he could not return as a man, then he would choose to be sent
back to the earth as ant.
This seems a
queer choice. There are so many finer and more beautiful creatures in the world
than ants, dogs, horses, elephants, lions, tigers. You would think it would be
better to be one of these animals than to be an ant; yet Bismarck knew what he
was talking about. He was a man who loved order. His idea of a perfect state was
one in which every person worked for the good of the whole community, and this
ordered form of life is found amongst ants more than any other kind of living
creatures, not excepting man.
A city of ants
is a teeming hive where work is unending. The homes of these tiny creatures are
underneath small mounds raised a little above the surrounding fields, and
inside the mounds there are chambers and galleries filled with thousands of
hurrying little creatures. The centre of an ant community is the queen. She
alone lays eggs which will become the whole of the next generation in the ant
city. As soon as the grubs are hatched out of the eggs, they are carefully watched
over by the nurse ants who feed them with special food, keep them clean and do
everything they can to make them grow.
There are no
unemployed, no slackers in an ant community. Whilst the nurse ants are looking
after the young, sentinel ants are mounting guard to give warning of the
approach of an enemy. Meanwhile, other ants will be hard at work, collecting
food or repairing the nest.
Men who have studied
the ways of ants tell strange things about their social life. Just as in
ancient days men kept slaves to work for them, so some ants raid the home of
other ants, and, making captives, bring them back to their nests, and compel
them to work for their captors. Ants, we are told, play games. They nurse their
sick, bury their dead, and-see no one is allowed to be lazy.
Questions:
1. What is the
queer choice of Bismarck?
2. Why is the
choice called queer?
3. Why did
Bismarck admire the life of the ant?
4. Why is the
queen called the centre of the ant community?
5. Where do ants
live?
6. Why is it
said that in a city of ants ‘work is unending’?
7. What is the
function of nurse ants?
8. Mention a few
interesting things about the social life of ants.
