The protagonist is full of interest in the pair of small sticks behind the wings of a fly that he suddenly discovers. In particular, it was discovered that there is a coordinated movement between the pair of sticks and wings.
Can the wings be controlled by controlling these small sticks? The protagonist has an idea.
He did not know that this pair of small sticks is called a balance stick. The balance stick only exists in dipteran insects such as mosquitoes and flies. It is a small stick-shaped object formed by the degeneration of the hind wings.
The balance rod plays a role in positioning and adjustment during flight. It vibrates at the same frequency as the forewing, but in the opposite direction.
When the fly flies horizontally, the balance rod plays a role in stability and balance.
If the heading deviates, the change in the vibration plane of the balance rod is felt by the receptors at its base, and then transmitted to the brain by the nerves. After the fly's brain analyzes the deviation signal, it sends "commands" to the muscle tissue in certain parts to immediately correct the deviation.
Therefore, in theory, the balance rod can play a role in controlling the direction of the fly. This can be regarded as the protagonist guessing it by mistake.
The protagonist climbed down again, tied the reins to the pair of balancing rods, and then climbed back onto the back of the fly.
Since the position of the balance bar is below and behind the back of the fly where the protagonist is sitting, the reins are extended backward this time, which is exactly the opposite direction to the extension direction of the reins when riding a horse, which makes the protagonist a little uncomfortable at first.
After grabbing the reins, the protagonist remembered that he had not sent a new instruction information packet to the red-headed fly under him, telling it what the signal was to move forward. So how to control the movement of this fly? Isn't it rare that I have to go down and deliver the information packet first?
It was too troublesome to climb up and down. The protagonist wanted to be lazy and gave it a try. He pulled the reins forward.
When the fly moved, it instinctively crawled forward after feeling the bend of the balance rod being pulled forward.
The protagonist was overjoyed that it was so easy to manipulate.
The ants at the entrance of the nest moved out of the way, making way for the slowly crawling fly. This fly crawled out of the small nest where it had broken its pupa for the first time.
The protagonist slowly experiments with controlling flies in an underground lair with complicated roads, and this is far easier than he imagined.
As long as you tighten the reins forward, the fly will move forward. If you loosen the reins at this time, the fly will continue to move forward.
Turning left means pulling the reins to the left, turning right does the opposite.
If you lift the reins upward, the fly will start to flap its wings and want to take off, but of course it cannot do this in the narrow underground.
The only thing that cannot be solved is how to stop the fly from moving forward and landing.
Of course, in theory, the effect can be achieved by simply pulling the balance bar backward or downward, but the protagonist is sitting in front of and above the balance bar, and it is impossible to pull the balance bar in these two directions with just a simple rein.
The protagonist was thinking about it while riding the red-headed fly, and slowly came up with a plan.
After the fly stopped on its own, the protagonist asked the worker ants to continue feeding it a drop of honeydew, and then asked the worker ants to find a short wooden stick and some ant silk.
The protagonist tied a short wooden stick with ant wire under the abdomen of the fly, which is the lower and rear position of the balance rod.
Another ant silk rein was tied to the balance stick. After going around the short wooden stick, it turned around and extended in front of the protagonist.
In this way, when the protagonist pulls the second rein, the fly can feel the balance bar being pulled downward and rearward. The fly crawling on the ground will stop moving forward, while the fly flying in the air will drop in height.
In this way, theoretically there is a way to effectively control flies, but the specific effect remains to be seen in experiments.
The protagonist rides this big red-headed fly and slowly wanders around underground, proving that such a set of reins is very maneuverable, at least when the fly is crawling.
The next step is to experiment with the control method in flight. But the protagonist does not plan to conduct flight experiments immediately.
Firstly, it is because it is late today and it is already close to dusk after all the experiments.
Second, because there is no suitable saddle on the fly's back, it is not a big problem when crawling on the ground. If it flies in the sky, it will be easily thrown out.
So there was a need to make a saddle that could secure the rider to the back of the fly.
The protagonist first personally rode the red-headed fly back to the small nest where it had broken pupa, comforted it, and asked a few breeding staff ants to take good care of it at night.
Then the protagonist goes back to figure out how to make a saddle.
With the dim light of fluorescent bacteria, the protagonist and the secretary worked overtime all night and finally made a set of saddlery. At this time, the protagonist doesn't mind that the fluorescent bacteria are cultivated with ant dung.
The saddle was made from wood chips, sticks and ant wire. There is a saddle (or fly saddle?) with wood as the bone and ant silk as the pad. The saddle can be firmly tied to the fly's chest and back with the ant silk.
There are also a number of nooses made of wooden sticks and ant wire on the saddle, which can tightly tie the rider's body and two rear limbs to the saddle to prevent them from being thrown out.
The protagonist, who had stayed up all night, went to catch up on his sleep and didn't wake up until noon.
After waking up, the protagonist immediately took the vehicle to find his fly mount.
The red-headed fly sat quietly in the nest all night. Occasionally when it became agitated, the worker ants stung it twice, and the fly quickly became quiet.
The red-headed fly was actually very excited when it saw the protagonist, the queen ant. It came over and rubbed its hands, obviously asking for honeydew.
The protagonist makes a worker ant spit out the aphid honeydew stored in its belly, slightly rewarding this smart fly.
Then while the fly was enjoying the delicious food, the protagonist and the secret tied the saddle to the fly.
Finally, the protagonist turned over and tied himself firmly to the saddle with ant silk.
After the fly eats, the protagonist controls it to slowly walk towards the exit of the underground lair.
As it gets closer and closer to the ground, the protagonist feels a little nervous - this is flying to the sky, what if it falls? What if a bird eats this fly?
By the way, after arriving in this world, apart from all kinds of bugs, it seems that not only have I never seen humans, but I have never seen any birds, frogs, or lizards. It's really strange. Could it be that this is a world with only insects? Is it prehistoric times? Have other animals not evolved yet?
The protagonist is thinking wildly, and he can only comfort himself that it is a good thing not to have birds, at least they will not be eaten. And with the weight of flies and ants, even if they fall from a high place, nothing will happen.
Just as I was thinking this, the fly had already crawled to the entrance and got out of the ground.
When the protagonist is calming down and wants to grit his teeth and make up his mind to take off.
The fly didn't know if it was because it saw the blue sky and the red sun for the first time. Under the control of instinct, it flicked its wings and suddenly jumped into the sky before the protagonist gave any instructions.
"Ahhhhhhh... Oh my God... I'm not mentally prepared yet..." The protagonist cursed in his heart as he was taken all the way up into the sky.
