He makes his capture, as I have said it is generally something which can be of no sort of use to himself or anybody else it is usually seven times bigger than it ought to be he hunts out the awkwardest place to take hold of it he lifts it bodily up in the air by main force, and starts-not toward home, but in the opposite direction not calmly and wisely, but with a frantic haste which is wasteful of his strength he fetches up against a pebble, and, instead of going around it, he climbs over it backwards, dragging his booty after him, tumbles down on the other side, jumps up in a passion, kicks the dust off his clothes, moistens his hands, grabs his property viciously, yanks it this way, then that, shoves it ahead of him a moment, turns tail and lugs it after him another moment, gets madder and madder, then presently hoists it into the air and goes tearing away in an entirely new direction comes to a weed it never occurs to him to go around it. His home may be only three feet away no matter, he can’t find it. He goes out foraging, he makes a capture, and then what does he do? Go home? No he goes anywhere but home. I admit his industry, of course he is the hardest working creature in the world-when anybody is looking-but his leather-headedness is the point I make against him. Those particular ants may be all that the naturalist paints them, but I am persuaded that the average ant is a sham. I refer to the ordinary ant, of course I have had no experience of those wonderful Swiss and African ones which vote, keep drilled armies.

During many summers now I have watched him, when I ought to have been in better business, and I have not yet come across a living ant that seemed to have any more sense than a dead one. It seems to me that in the matter of intellect the ant must be a strangely overrated bird. I found nothing new in him-certainly nothing to change my opinion of him. Now and then, while we rested, we watched the laborious ant at his work.

A Tramp Abroad by Mark Twain