Brewer's: Ants

Go to the ant, thou sluggard, ... which provideth her meat in the summer ” (Proverbs vi. 6–8; and xxx. 25). The notion that ants in general gather food in harvest for a winter's store is quite an error; in the first place, they do not live on grain, but chiefly on animal food; and in the next place they are torpid in winter, and do not require food. Colonel Sykes, however, says there is in Poonah a grain-feeding species, which stores up millet-seed; and according to Lubbock and Moggridge, ants in the south of Europe and in Texas make stores.

What are called “ant eggs” are not eggs, but the pupæ of ants.

Source: Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, E. Cobham Brewer, 1894
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