Word: caterpillar
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...ones whose total value equaled the original. In 1964's first quarter alone, 43 Big Board companies have done the split, including RCA, Pan American, Campbell Soup and A.T. & T.,*whose 2-for-l split next month will be the biggest division of stock in history. Last week Caterpillar Tractor and May Department Stores joined the march by proposing 2-for-l splits. It looks like a big year in Splitsville...
...have long admired the industrious ants that keep aphids as cows and milk them for their sweet "honeydew" secretion. Now a graduate student in entomology has added to the brief catalogue of insect husbandry Louisiana State University's Gary Ross has watched Mexican carpenter ants (Camponotus abominalis) protect caterpillars against their natural enemies and live on the juices that the caterpillars excrete. Though both parties benefit from the odd relationship, nature ensures that it is always brief: by the time they are 83 days old, the caterpillar cattle sprout orange-rimmed wings and fly away...
Sunset Supper. The ants never let the caterpillars out of their care. During the day they keep the caterpillars in individual burrows a few inches long, and plug the entrances with pellets of earth. A few ants always stay inside to guard each precious caterpillar cow. The burrows are always close to the caterpillars' favorite food plant, a low white-flowered bush, but they may be as far as 50 ft. from the ant colony...
When the sun has set, the guardian ants come out of the burrow and climb into the bush. They inspect every twig and leaf, looking for marauders, especially the fierce, predatory ants that infest the pinewoods and would quickly slaughter the caterpillars. When Ross put spiders or beetles on the bushes, the protecting ants found them at once and quickly dragged them away. About 7:30 p.m., the caterpillar is let out of its burrow. Shepherded by the carpenter ants, it climbs to the topmost leaves of the bush and starts feeding greedily. The ants climb aboard and drink...
Escaping Butterfly. When dangerous dawn approaches, carpenter ants swarm over the caterpillar, herd it down the bush and into the burrow. Then they crawl in beside it and pull mud pellets over the entrance. Even when the caterpillar turns into a chrysalis, they stay on guard until it emerges as a butterfly and flutters freely away...