In which gentleman scholar and committed insect-botherer Sir John Lubbock observes what happens when ants are forcibly plied with alcohol. Sober ants who encountered inebriated counter­parts from the same nest were more likely to move their hive-mate to safety to sleep off the effects of their imposed bender. Ants from other nests were more likely to be moved ‘to water’. (Or in other, less euphemistic words: drowned.)

In an 1877 Popular Science article describing the exper­iment, Lubbock complained about the diffi­culty of getting his myrme­co­lo­gical specimens suitably liquored up. It was not easy in all cases to hit off the requisite degree of this compulsory intox­ic­ation, he wrote. (Lubbock would spend the following year exper­i­menting with the effects of slipping roofies to woodlice.)