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.)