From the prisoner's perspective, the protagonist can clearly see the densely packed fungi and hyphae on this mountain of corpses.
But the prisoner turned a blind eye, threw the body of his dead companion up, and turned away.
If all these ant corpses were cleaned up from "Dongyang City", then a large number of ants would die in this nest in just a few months. This mortality rate is too high.
From this point of view, this thread-parasitic fungus is not a harmless thing. It will not only absorb the nutrients of the host, but also cause the parasitized ants to die early due to weakness.
The parasite may even take over the ants' minds, making them aggressive while ignoring the harmful effects of the parasite.
In addition, the protagonist also meets the queen of this ant nest from the memory of the captive. But is this strange ant really the queen?
The captive came to the queen's nest during a changing of the guard and was responsible for feeding the queen.
The queen of normal ants is larger than the average worker ants and soldier ants, and is about three times as long as the worker ants.
Normally, when the queen ant is not laying a large number of eggs, her abdomen is only slightly larger than that of the male ant, and she can move on her own.
When it is time to lay a large number of eggs, the abdomen of these queens will expand to twice its original size due to eating a large amount of food and hormonal changes.
At this time, a normal queen ant can lay up to more than 300 eggs per day. But at the same time, because the queen is too bulky, she rarely moves. Even if she wants to move, it is difficult for the queen ant to do it by herself, and she needs to order worker ants to assist her.
But what does the queen look like in the eyes of the captive at this moment?
Just looking at the upper body of this queen ant, the shape of her upper body is similar to that of a normal male ant. Judging from the shiny skin, she is quite healthy.
If he hadn't seen the dozens of densely packed silk threads on the queen's back, the protagonist wouldn't have been able to imagine that one ant could harbor so many parasitic bacteria.
Not only the silk threads on her back, but what shocked the protagonist the most was the abdomen of the queen ant.
The body shape of an ant can no longer be seen in this abdomen. The length of the abdomen is five or six times that of the upper body. It is plump and bloated. The protagonist suddenly feels that the one in front of him is not an ant queen, but a termite queen.
But unlike the white abdomen of the termite queen, the abdomen of this queen is still yellow-brown. The almost transparent carapace that has been pulled has horizontal stripes dotted with some soft and hard hairs. This is a typical big-headed ant. Characteristics of the abdomen.
Different from the smooth and hairy abdomen of ordinary ants, not a single ant hair can be seen on the abdomen of this queen ant, but there are round bulges everywhere on the left and right, and these bulges almost reach the surface of the epidermis. The very thin carapace burst.
Some places have indeed burst, and there are bulges in some places where the carapace joins, and traces of green pus are flowing out from the gaps, covering the shell.
The queen ant's bloated abdomen is constantly laying ant eggs that look relatively normal at the top.
This queen lays eggs significantly faster than the normal big-headed ant queen, laying an egg almost every minute. This rate is even faster than that of the pavement ant queen, which is known for its prolific fecundity.
If this continues, this ant nest will have more than 1,400 new members a day. No wonder it doesn't care about the large number of companions who died due to parasitic bacteria.
It’s hard for the protagonist to imagine that a queen mutated to such a degree could lay eggs at such a speed, and also need to be supplied with dozens of threads of parasitic bacteria to continuously suck nutrients, and the bulge in her abdomen is constantly flowing with pus. How much nutrition does she need to keep up? Up?
Through the captive's perspective, the protagonist sees a line of worker ants, which is like an assembly line constantly dedicating large amounts of nutritious food to the queen.
The queen ant didn't care whether it was honeydew, insect fat or even fresh ant eggs that she had just laid. She bit into them all and swallowed them whole.
There is only a small gap, and the queen ant will take the time to put her tentacles on the large worker ants nearby, as if communicating.
At this time, the protagonist remembered that this nest was very strange, and he did not see a male ant. Although this prisoner is just a worker ant at the bottom, he has been running around in the nest every day for a full month. Even the queen ant has seen it. It is impossible not to see the male ant who is actually in power!
If there are no male ants in this nest! ? Then the protagonist's idea that a hidden male ant is behind the scenes breaks down.
The protagonist searched the captive's memory again, but still found no trace of the existence of male ants.
But the protagonist still found some useful clues.
Basic operations in the ant nest, such as searching for food and repairing the nest, can be completed by relying on the instincts of worker ants and soldier ants.
Some complex group work, such as expansion of ant nests, large-scale hunting, etc., generally require male ants to direct from the center.
There are no male ants in this strange parasitic ant nest, and similar work is done by some larger worker ants.
Looking at these large worker ants, whose IQ is obviously close to that of male ants, the protagonist feels very familiar.
Isn't this the killer worker ant that hides in their wedding flight team and then waits for opportunities to murder? Moreover, the secret agent next to the protagonist also looks like this kind of big worker ant in terms of IQ and body shape.
These large worker ants perfectly replace the status of male ants in the parasitic ant nest. They will even form and lead a team of fifty ants to complete patrol work.
The worker ants and soldier ants in the ant nest also treat these big workers with respect as if they were facing the male ants. This captive was ordered by the big worker ant many times, and then he carried it out faithfully.
The protagonist reads the instructions given by the big worker ants again. These instructions are also information packets, but compared with the information packets issued by the male ants, the content is slightly simpler, and they often only have simple mission goals. But this is enough for the worker ants and soldier ants to comply with it.
Are these big worker ants the rulers of the parasitic ant nest? Was it also the work of these big worker ants that murdered Lao Wang and other male ants before?
With the protagonist's limited knowledge, he cannot understand why the worker ants create male ants. This is not a human society, and there are various conflicts of interests.
But in fact, in the original world, if there was one ant species in the ant nest that controlled the entire nest, it would be the worker ants.
Male ants and female ants are only responsible for reproducing offspring, and soldier ants are actually a variant of worker ants. Soldier ants do not even exist in many types of ants.
The worker ants, on the other hand, are responsible for maintaining the normal operation of the entire ant nest and doing almost all the work.
And worker ants will interfere with or even dominate the affairs of other ant species.
For example, some ants will build a new nest with multiple queens, and when the nest reaches a certain size, the worker ants will kill the excess queens.
For example, when the male and female ants arrive for their mating flight, the worker ants will attack the male and female ants still in the nest and drive them out.
So, is this mutation pattern of giant worker ants dominating the ant nest atavistic or evolutionary?
