It was a peaceful night, and the protagonist slept very soundly.
The next day, Xiaomi, who was first awakened by the biological clock, waited for a while and saw that other ants also got up on time according to the biological clock. In fact, the ants woke up long ago. Although it was a rare opportunity to fall asleep, three or four hours of deep sleep was the limit for them. However, before dawn, according to the protagonist's order, they were not allowed to move around and make noise, so they had to stay asleep. Lie down honestly.
Now that the sun has fully risen, the ants, who have ended their night mode, are becoming impatient and have begun to have the urge to disobey orders. In the end, the little secretary saw that the protagonist hadn't gotten up yet, so she had to go over and push him.
The protagonist finally got up. According to the established procedure, he led the team members to push the stone at the door and climbed to the ground. He stretched his forelimbs in the direction of the sun and checked that the luggage and food in another cave were safe. Then the protagonist ate half of a sunflower seed and drank the dew that had not completely evaporated.
Then the small team hit the road.
According to the secretary, we can reach the main nest before noon. "We can still make it in time for lunch." The protagonist thought to himself. At this time, he selectively forgot that the ants did not have the habit of having lunch on time. After all, they were tired of eating sunflower seeds all the time. There was no other suitable food in the sub-nest where he was, but Maybe there will be one in the main nest. I think the main nest will not be stingy with some food to entertain the king who comes from afar.
Not long after walking, the protagonist has already seen the active ants in the main nest. These worker ants actually move in groups of dozens, including ten soldier ants.
They also discovered the protagonist and his party. After verifying each other's identities, these mixed teams of worker ants and soldier ants continued to move in the direction where the protagonist and the others came.
"What are they doing with all these ants?" the protagonist asked.
"Hunting." The secretary simply answered.
"Why don't we hunt like this in our nest? We only gave me ten soldier ants to hunt last time..." the protagonist complained. If there was a group of ants, he might not have encountered the praying mantis in such a mess last time.
"We are not short of food, so we don't need to hunt often." The secretary gave a speechless answer.
The protagonist asked hesitantly: "So the main nest is short of food? Why is it still short of food? Then my plan to change the taste of lunch is no longer possible."
"The main nest is short of food." The secret replied: "All ants know that the main nest is short of food."
The protagonist remembered that the ants could only answer one question at a time, so he had to ask again: "Why is the main nest short of food?"
"A lot of queens, a lot of kings, a lot of soldiers and worker ants. Eat a lot." The secretary explained.
The protagonist supplemented his imagination and roughly pieced together the truth about the lack of food in the main nest: The biggest difference between the main nest and the deputy nest is the large number of queen ants and male ants. Both Lao Wang and the secretary mentioned this, and the queen ant Male and female ants are not engaged in production. The more of these two types of ants, the more food resources will be consumed, requiring additional worker ants to support them. Moreover, although the soldier ants and worker ants in the main nest can search for food, the greater the number, the better. On the contrary, too many will increase the burden. After all, ants usually rush back to the nest before dark, and one ant can do this in one day. Take this distance as the radius and draw a circle with the nest location as the center. The area of this circle is the maximum range within which the ants in this nest can search for food. The area of this circle is fixed, the various food resources it can produce are also fixed, and the number of ants it can feed has an upper limit.
The protagonist cannot estimate what this upper limit is, but he has a rough intuitive impression of the main nest's lack of food.
These larger hunting teams are obviously hunting larger prey. The risk of hunting is definitely higher than searching for plant food or grazing aphids, and the main nest would rather sacrifice the loss of ants to obtain meat through hunting. , obviously the food storage is not optimistic.
As they walked along, the protagonist and the others saw many hunting teams. Moreover, there are ants climbing up and down everywhere on the trees, shrubs, and grass blades along the way. Even if the previous ant has searched for a leaf and found nothing, the latter ant will be unwilling to explore again. The entire ground looked as if it had been swept by the North, with not a single trace of fungi, grass seeds or fruits to be seen.
A few unknown plants with tender stems were actually densely packed with aphids. These unknown plants were overwhelmed, and the grass leaves were withered and withered. The grazing worker ants anxiously tap the abdomen of each aphid back and forth with their tentacles. As long as a drop of honeydew is produced, the worker ants will rush to drink it. The worker ants with bloated bellies will quickly run towards the nest, where there may be countless companions waiting to be fed. The protagonist is far away from the aphids. At this time, he has not discovered the connection between the aphid honeydew and the sugar water he often drinks.
The protagonist was greatly disappointed by the scenes along the way. He originally thought that a main nest community that could use fire would be a society with highly developed productivity. Maybe in addition to fire, it also pointed out the technology trees of other primitive societies. What I didn't expect to see was a scene where everyone was fighting for their stutter.
However, the protagonist does not know that in the history of human development, the input-output ratio of humans who have just entered the settlement stage in primitive animal husbandry and planting is not as efficient as that in the collection era. A laborer in the foraging era may only need to work three hours a day to fill his stomach, while those engaged in agriculture must work most of the year to ensure food. However, with the emergence of division of labor and the expansion of the scale of settled agriculture, an agricultural society only needs a small piece of land to support a person, while a gathering society may need a forest to support a person. The population that an agricultural society can support far exceeds that of a gathering society.
The current main nest is like a tribe that has just entered the agricultural society. Although it still relies heavily on hunting to supplement food, the production model of large-scale grazing of aphids is something that the secondary nest where the protagonist is located does not have. The few ants in the secondary nest can survive just by collecting plant seeds.
As the protagonist and others walked forward, they also saw a large number of ants carrying dry wood. The protagonist guessed that these were providing fuel for the fire.
Pass through a patch of tall weeds and enter a flat stretch of gravel. The protagonist is shocked by what he sees.
Not far away, there is a mound about half a meter high. The mound is conical in shape and about one meter in diameter. It covers an area of about 3.14 square meters. A mound of this size is like a huge castle relative to the size of an ant. Countless ants gathered at the castle, and the busy scene could only be described as busy.
But these are not the most shocking.
At the top of the mound castle, from a huge opening, billowing black smoke continued to pour out. The black smoke rolled up and rose until it reached a certain height before being blown away by the wind.
That's the smoke from the fire.
"I saw smoke!"
