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The discussion of the role of agriculture in the evolution of ultrasocial behavior in both social insects and humans is focused on cultivation of crops such as fungi (ants and termites) and cereals (humans). However, agriculture also involves domestication of animals. Animal husbandry plays a very important role in many human and ant societies. Numerous ants rear “cattle” (such as aphids, coccids [i.e., scale insects], and treehoppers) and use their secretions as an important source of food. They construct shelters for their “cattle,” transport them, and protect them against predators. Like humans, ants also sometimes eat their “cattle” to obtain proteinic food (Hölldobler & Wilson 1990).
G&K discuss food storage largely in terms of storage of produced surplus, although they mention the evidence for pre-domestication granaries in the Jordan Valley (Kuijt & Finlayson 2009). There exists further evidence showing that food and/or water storage preceded the advent of agriculture in both humans and ants. Bushmen hunter-gatherers from Kalahari store water in emptied ostrich eggshells, and the tradition of using such containers is at least 60,000 years old (Texier et al. 2010). Harvester ants do not culture plants, but forage for seeds and store them in underground granaries. Honeypot ants may act as “living larders” and store liquid food in their distended abdomens (Hölldobler & Wilson 1990).
G&K extensively discuss morphological adaptations of ants to various functions fulfilled by them within the framework of the division of labor among the...