“Ants owe their superiority to their terrestrial life. This assertion may seem paradoxical, but consider the exceptional advantages afforded by a terrestrial medium to the development of their intellectual faculties, compared with an aerial medium! In the air there are the long flights without obstacles, the vertiginous journeys far from real bodies, the instability, the wandering about, the endless forget fulness of things and oneself. On the earth, on the contrary, there is not a movement that is not a contact and does not yield precise information, not a journey that fails to leave some reminiscence ; and as these journeys are determinate, it is inevitable that a portion of the ground incessantly traversed should be registered, together with its resources and its dangers, in the animal's imagination. Thus here results a closer and much more direct communication with the external world.” NatureFreedomAnimalsInsectsAntsDeadlinesAerialTerrestrial Book:Des Sociétés Animales (2e Éd.) (Éd.1878) (Sciences Sociales) Source: Des Sociétés Animales (2e Éd.) (Éd.1878) (Sciences Sociales)