After finishing the conversation with Lao Wang, Lao Wang took the guide worker ants back. Before leaving, the guide ant said that the protagonist can come to the classroom at any time. As long as the guard ant is notified, he can contact her and she can leave at any time. After all, in this world, ants don’t need luggage when setting off.
But the protagonist cannot be so casual. First of all, the protagonist cannot find sunflower seeds anytime and anywhere to satisfy his hunger. The protagonist doesn't know how other ants will solve the problem of food and accommodation on the road, so he can only prepare in advance according to his own needs.
The protagonist first went to ask Hua Mulan how they solved the problem of food and accommodation on the way to the main nest last time. As a result, Hua Mulan told him that there was no need to eat at all, as long as he had a full meal before departure. As for drinking water, there is dew every day. In terms of accommodation, digging a small temporary cave at night can solve the problem of staying overnight safely.
Well, it is indeed a simple and crude solution in the style of ants. The protagonist himself can also learn from the solution of accommodation and drinking water, but the problem of food is troublesome.
Ants are social stomachers. Ants that are able to do so will try to fill their stomachs and crops as much as possible, and will share food with hungry companions when they meet them. Just like when the protagonist saw the nanny worker ants feeding him mouth to mouth. And if there is no need to feed their companions, then ordinary ants can survive for ten and a half months without eating while maintaining normal activity levels, and some species of ants can even survive for eight months. So Hua Mulan takes it for granted that after a full meal, she doesn't need to eat anymore on the way to the main nest.
But the protagonist, a time traveler, probably has a relatively high IQ and the energy consumed by brain activity is much higher than that of ordinary ants. He basically maintains one to two meals a day, and the food he eats is rich in fat. and sugary high-calorie foods - sunflower seeds and honeydew. It can only be said that if it were not supported by countless hard-working worker ants, the protagonist would definitely not be able to support himself. Although in the most extreme situation, the protagonist can let Hua Mulan and the others feed themselves mouth to mouth, it is best not to let this happen.
And the most important thing is safety. Last time I went out for only a few hours, I encountered a praying mantis and almost lost my life that I had finally regained. Moreover, the natural enemies of ants are not only praying mantises, but also insectivorous stink bugs, spiders, spotted beetles, ant flies, etc. Not to mention woodpeckers, echidnas, pangolins, anteaters, aardvarks, brown bears, apes and other birds and animals.
However, relatively speaking, the threat from birds and beasts is smaller. If you are targeted by these birds and beasts with huge differences in size, the protagonist will definitely die. However, even if these birds and beasts want to eat ants, they will eat ants with a large number of them. Starting from the nest and chasing a small group of ants is too cost-effective. Therefore, the most important thing to guard against along the way is all kinds of insects.
Food and security are problems that the protagonist must solve.
For this reason, the protagonist lost a lot of his brain cells, rummaged around in various granaries in the lair, and was disgusted by various insect corpses several times.
In terms of food, the protagonist found a few sunflower seeds and other nuts. After peeling off the shells, it was probably enough for the protagonist to eat for three days. The size of these things already requires six strong soldier ants to carry them all the way. Any more will affect the speed of travel.
In terms of safety, the protagonist found a good thing in a granary full of the smell of decaying corpses and solved this hidden danger. An empty snail shell.
This snail shell looks relatively new and clean. The meat inside was probably eaten not long ago. The snail shell is big enough for the three protagonists to fit inside. The protagonist imagines that if the danger comes from an insect that is about the same size as an ant, then this insect is generally not an opponent of the small team of ants. If the opponent is a huge killer like a mantis, then as long as the protagonist can get into the snail shell in time, the huge opponent will be helpless. And this empty snail shell is not heavy, and only three worker ants or two soldier ants can carry it easily.
The creativity of the protagonist is indeed not comparable to that of these uncivilized ants. Out of obsessive-compulsive disorder, the protagonist does not want the soldier ants or worker ants in the team to have to carry food and snail shells on the road, which will affect the forward speed, and less time wasted on the road will be safer.
The protagonist searched various warehouses and found some half of the sunflower seed shells and some tough plant fibers that had been peeled before. He caught a few worker ants and asked them to take the food, sunflower seed shells, and plants that the protagonist found. Fibers and snail shells were carried back to the two-bedroom house.
In the two-bedroom apartment, the protagonist tried placing a sunflower seed shell on the back of his soldier ant. The shell was large enough to hold a sunflower seed kernel or other small nuts, and the soldier ants could carry it up and move around normally.
The only problem is how to attach the sunflower seed shells to the soldier ant's back. After all, the carapace on the back of the soldier ant has a curvature, and the sunflower seed shell also has a curvature, so it is quite unstable to stand on it.
The protagonist's previous idea was to use plant fiber as a rope to tie it up and fix it, but the protagonist's pair of ants each have only one finger on their forelimbs, which is the bendable part at the top of the joint. A simple knot is fine. If you want to tie the sunflower seed shell It was too difficult to bind the whole thing tightly, and even after taking a few steps, the sunflower seed shells would slide to one side, and the food inside would be knocked over. In fact, if you make a hole in the sunflower seed shell and let the rope pass through it, many problems will be solved, but the protagonist does not have a hole-drilling tool.
After seeing the silk bed, the protagonist thought of the final solution. First, tie two thick wooden sticks arranged parallel to the back of the soldier ant with a plant fiber rope. The direction of the wooden sticks is consistent with the direction of the head and tail of the soldier ant. After tying, the two wooden sticks and the back shell of the soldier ant are tied. It forms a concave shape with slightly higher sides and a slightly lower middle. The technical content of tying wooden sticks is also much lower.
The sunflower seed shells are glued to two wooden sticks with highly sticky silk that has just been spit out by ant larvae and has not yet oxidized. The glue spit out by the larvae has excellent stickiness and toughness after oxidation. There are two wooden sticks as stress points, and the shape of the shell can fit into the depression formed by the wooden sticks and the ant's back. This is much more stable than having only one stress point on the top of the ant's back.
The thought that the silk spun by ant larvae is sticky is due to the documentary the protagonist watched in his previous life, in which the leaf-cutting ants used the silk spun by the larvae to sew leaves together to make nests. At this time, the protagonist did not know that the certain species of big-headed ants he now belonged to also belonged to the leaf-cutter ant subfamily.
As for the method of transporting the snail shell, the protagonist is planning to make a transport tool similar to a sliding rod that requires two soldier ants to carry it together. The materials used are also wooden sticks, plant fibers, sunflower seed shells and ant larvae brand glue. The general structure is also similar to the previous design. It's just that two people lift the sliding rod front and back, and the protagonist designed this transport tool to be carried side by side by two soldier ants.
The production of these vehicles was done by the protagonist himself and took three days of work. The protagonist also wanted other worker ants and soldier ants to help, but found that even if he had conceived the plan in detail in his mind, after issuing the order, these stupid ants still had no way to start. Only when the specific process is broken down into very simple steps can these ants barely get started.
In fact, if the protagonist is planning to build an assembly line, with the training of Professor Qin Jia, these ants may be able to do the job, and they may not be worse than the assembly line robots currently used by humans. But the protagonist currently doesn’t need that much productivity, nor does he have that patience. Therefore, the protagonist simply asked a few clever worker ants to do some simple work, and personally completed the construction of six single-ant backpack vehicles and two double-ant backpack vehicles.
What? You ask why there is only one snail shell but two double ant backpacks are built. It's not to prevent damage. After all, the smaller something is, the stronger it is and its resistance to damage is stronger.
The answer is... The protagonist placed a small silk bed on another vehicle. In this way, when you are tired from walking, you can go up to rest and let your subordinates carry you. And when digging a hole to camp at night, there is no need to sleep on the muddy ground.
In the pursuit of comfort, the protagonist will never treat himself badly.
