After the protagonist comforted the twenty male ants who failed again, he said that they could still participate in the wedding flight ceremony tomorrow, and encouraged them to keep up their efforts and one day succeed. Finally, these heartbroken male ants were coaxed back to their nests.
During this period, Hua Mulan ran back and told the protagonist that the construction of the entire harem area has been completed and can be moved in at any time. Ants' houses don't have to be decorated and smelled like humans do. They only need to dig a hole, which is very convenient.
The protagonist praised her. Although Hua Mulan was not as smart as Xiao Mi, she was slowly growing up and was able to complete some less complicated tasks independently.
Later, the protagonist asked the messenger to notify the female ants to gather in the conference room. The protagonist personally took the victorious twelve male ants to the conference room.
After all the ants arrived, the male and female ants stood separately in two rows according to the protagonist's instructions, clearly distinguishing each other.
Then the protagonist told them the rules of pairing: the male ants choose their favorite female ants in order according to the wedding flight ceremony. Female ants can refuse a male ant's pairing. If they don't refuse, they will be considered a successful pairing.
The reason why it is so complicated is that the protagonist wants to subtly change the inherent concepts of these ants. In his opinion, although these ants have already seen the dawn of civilization, they still have a lot of cold-blooded cruelty. In this regard, they are no different from their ancestors millions of years ago.
For example, the cruel wedding flight ceremony, the fierce internal fighting among the queens, etc. The protagonist hopes to use the authority of God to change this situation through a new wedding ceremony and other ways of changing customs. In short, he wants the ants to be a little more human.
The male and female ants quickly understood the specific implementation method, which is the convenience of communication between ants. The protagonist only needs to visualize the imaginary process and quickly convey it to the other party.
Although these ants did not understand the meaning of such a complicated pairing method, they still complied with the request of the God Envoy King.
The first person who needed to choose a partner was Gun. He hesitated, and as the protagonist expected, he chose the little female ant who had fought side by side with him. The little female ant did not refuse, so the protagonist announced that they were paired successfully and went aside to wait first. This is the first pair of guests to successfully hold hands.
The male ants behind also chose their matching partners. The protagonist carefully studied their preferences and discovered an interesting phenomenon.
Male ants give priority to females with larger abdomens, because these females have well-developed ovaries that stretch their bellies, and they obviously have more advantages in fertility. It seems that male ants also have the same preference as humans for "big butts make it easier to have children".
Not a single female ant expressed any objection or rejection. They all accepted whoever chose. These female ants had no autonomy in previous wedding flight ceremonies. They could only be passively chased by male ants and semi-forced to complete mating. Now they were suddenly given the right to choose, and they didn't know how to exercise it.
The protagonist cannot force these female ants to exercise their veto power. It seems that changing customs still has a long way to go.
But overall, this pairing ceremony was a success ceremony, a victory ceremony, and a unity ceremony. Without a trace of fighting or bloodshed, the pairing of twelve couples was completed, ushering in a new era for the marriage system of the Big-headed Ant Kingdom.
The protagonist announced that twelve couples would be sent into the bridal chamber, so the protagonist personally led the way. The couples followed behind without knowing why, and were taken to the newly built harem area.
The protagonist sends them one-on-one to the exclusive queen's palace to spend the night, and requires the newcomers to stay there for one night or they are not allowed to come out.
There's nothing you can do about it, it only takes a few seconds for ants to mate. But since customs are changing, the groom cannot run away after a few seconds on such a memorable wedding night. The protagonist can only ensure the integrity of the ritual with mandatory orders. Anyway, the queen ant's bedroom is large enough to accommodate her.
The protagonist gives three rules to each newlywed couple who are about to get married: mating must be completed, fighting is not allowed, and male ants cannot leave until dawn.
After that, the protagonist, who has worked hard all day, can finally go back and rest.
It's really tiring to be an ant king. You have to take care of eating, drinking, and fighting, and you have to learn how to get married and have children all over again. The protagonist complained like this in his heart.
Because he was too tired, the protagonist slept until about three o'clock in the morning the next day. After waking up and asking about the time, the protagonist quickly asked Hua Mulan to go to each ant queen's palace to get information.
After the protagonist had breakfast, Hua Mulan also came back with the information she had gathered.
According to the female ants, the male ants ran away as soon as dawn, and staying with the female ants all night made them uncomfortable. After all, it is really difficult for these male ants to do something that can be done in a few seconds and have to tease them for hours.
After Hua Mulan's inspection, the female ants were successfully fertilized. It only takes a few days to adjust their body functions to production mode before they can start laying eggs.
The protagonist estimated that the production capacity of the big-headed ant queen is only one-third of that of the pavement ant queen, but a dozen queens can lay 4,000 eggs a day if they run at full power. In other words, as long as there is sufficient food, theoretically there will be about 1.5 million ants in "Dongyang City" in one year.
Of course, due to food restrictions, currently "Dongyang City" can only support a maximum of 20,000 to 30,000 ants, and this is without retaining food.
In fact, since the big-headed ants cannot go out to forage in winter and can only hide in their nests to eat stored food, the maximum supporting population of "Dongyang City" must be reduced by a quarter.
There is strength when there are many people, and the same is true when there are too many ants. The protagonist thinks that in order to expand the size of the city, he must obtain a wider range of food sources.
The protagonist wants to solve the food problem of the ants, and a reference method is to convert all or part of the ants' gathering and hunting for food into agricultural production.
When human ancestors were in the gathering and hunting stage of primitive society, the global population remained at hundreds of thousands for a long time. It wasn’t until we learned to plant and herd animals that the global human population experienced explosive growth.
There is actually a certain amount of agriculture among ants. For example, leafcutter ants collect plants and grow fungi for food, big-headed ants use ant droppings to grow fluorescent bacteria, and most ants graze aphids.
However, except for leaf-cutter ant farming, other ant agriculture can only play a small role in supplementing food. The protagonist doesn't know how leafcutter ants grow fungi, but it seems quite complicated.
